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ART 
UaRARV^ 



OF 




^'B R A*' 



AW 



The Great Masters 

/ in Paintiiis: and Sculpture 

Edited by G. C. Williamson 



BRUNELLESCHI 



THE GREAT MASTERS IN PAINTING 
AND SCULPTURE. 



The following volumes are now ready : 

BERNARDINO LUINI. By George C. Williamson. UttD . 

VELASQUEZ. By R. A. M. Stevenson. 

ANDREA DEL SARTO. By H. Guinness. 

LUCA SIGNORELLL By Maud Cruttwell. 

RAPHAEL. By H. Strachey. 

CARLO CRIVELLL 3y G. McNeil Rushforth, M.A. 

CORREGGIO. By Selwyn Brinton, M.A. 

DONATELLO. By Hope Rea. 

PERUGINO. By G. C. Williamson, Litt.D. 

SODOMA. By the Contessa Lorenzo Friuli-Bon. 

LUCA DELLA ROBBIA. By the Marchesa Burlamacchi. 

GIORGIONE. By Herbert Cook, M.A. 

MEMLINC. By W. H. James Weale, late Keeper of the 

National Art Library. 
PIERO DELLA FRANCESCA. By W. G. Waters, M.A. 
PINTORICCHIO. By Evelyn March Phillipps. 
FRANCIA. By GEORGE C. Williamson, Litt.D. 
BRUNELLESCHI. By Leader Scott. 

In Preparation, 
REMBRANDT. By Malcolm Bell. 
MANTEGNA. By Maud Cruttwell. 
GIOTTO. By F. Mason Perkins. 

WILKIE. ByLoRD Ronald SuTHERLAND-GowER,M.A., F.S.A. 
EL GRECO. By Manuel B. Cossio, Litt.D., Ph.D., Director 

of the Mus^ P^dagogique, Madrid. 
MICHAEL ANGELO. By Charles Holroyd, Keeper of the 

National Gallery of British Art 
THE BROTHERS BELLINI. By S. Arthur Strong, M.A., 

Librarian to the House of Lords. 
DURER. By Hans W. Singer, M.A., Ph.D. Assistant Director 

of the Koyal Print- Room, Dresden. 
TINTORETTO. By J. B. Stoughton Holborn. M.A. 
GERARD DOU. By Dr. W. Martin, Assistant Director of the 

Royal Print-Room, The Hague. 

Othtrs to follow. 



LONDON : GEORGE BELL AND SONS 



'B^"X"re>r,TV\YS. Uv;c^ \^ C ^: 



c-\\ V^ <■ 



FILIPPO DI SER 

BRUNELLESCO 



BY 



LEADER SCOTT 




LONDON 

GEORGE BELL & SONS 

1901 



MAR x9 i^bli 



PREFACE 

TT is very difficult to obtain enough data for an 
authentic life of Filippo di Ser Brunellesco. In 
writing the life of a painter, his own works are before us 
just as he painted them, and they unerringly reveal the 
genius and character of the man. A sculptor's statues 
and reliefs also show us visibly his own handiwork 
untouched by any sacrilegious hand but the gentle one 
of time ; the music of a composer who lived a hundred 
years ago, is with us still as he conceived it ; and the 
thoughts of the poet or philosopher are embalmed in 
their own language within the leaves of their books. 

But with an architect like Brunelleschi the case is 
different. 

His designs were changed even in the hands that 
continued them on his death; his buildings were re- 
stored (?) by subsequent architects and incongruous 
bits inserted in them, like Ammannati's Roman pedi- 
ments inserted to Brunelleschi's grand arched door- 
ways in the Pitti. Beyond the Pazzi chapel and the 
old sacristy of San Lorenzo, which Brunelleschi 
finished during his lifetime, I believe there is not 
another work of his by which a modem critic could 
fairly judge his design. Thus, the works which should 
best illustrate his nobility of conception are now more 
misleading than convincing in their evidence. 



vi PREFACE 

The only original fountain of information is the 
anonymous MS. written by a contemporary, which 
was first edited by Canon Domenico Moreni in 1812. 
From this fountain, aided by tradition and a few scarce 
documents, both Baldinucci and Vasari drew their facts. 
As far as regards the work of the cupola of the Florence 
Cathedral, we have now a full and true account, thanks 
to the learned archivist Sig. Cesare Guasti, who in 1887 
published his interesting extracts from the archives of 
the Opera, under the title of " La Cupola di Santa 
Maria del Fiore illustrata. Firenze, 1887." 

But of all Brunelleschi's other works the docu- 
mentary evidence is distressfully scarce, and in some 
cases utterly wanting. For these we have only the 
vague assertions of the earlier biographers, and to 
many of his commissions we can only fix an approxi- 
mate date suggested by some concomitant circum- 
stance. 

Thanks to Sig. Gaetano Milanesi, late of the State 
Archives, the anonimo is now no longer anonymous, 
but takes form as Antonio Manetti, a master joiner and 
architect, who knew Brunelleschi in life, and continued 
some of his works after his death. In the preface to 
his publication of the " Opere istoriche di Antonio 
Manetti, edite ed inedite," Milanesi gives all the proofs 
he has discovered of the authorship of the anonymous 
biographer. First, the similarity of writing with a MS. 
of the fifteenth century in the Magliabecchian, which 
MS. came from the Badia a Ripoli. It contains several 
different essays — among others, one entitled " De viri 
illustri di Firenze." At the end of the second part, 
"Dell* Arcadreo di Maestro Gherardi da Chermona" 



PREFACE vii 

(Cremona), is written : " Questo libro fe d' Antonio di 
Tuccio di Marabottino Manetti, e scritto di sua propria 
mano : acchi e' viene alle mani gli piaccia di renderlo, 
e prieghi Idio per lui. Compiuto negli anni del nostro 
Signore Yhu Xpo, 1441." After Part V., the " Life of 
Charlemagne," is written : " Scripto per me Antonio di 
Tuccio Manetti ciptadino fiorentino e di mie mano, 
e finito questo di VIII. di Settembre 1466 et copiato 
dallo originale et da donato acciaiuoli avuto, chello 
compuose in latino et tradusse in vulgare." The last 
part is only a translation into Italian of Filippo Villani's 
" De civitatis Florentiae famosis civibus." To Villani's 
book Manetti has added in the Codex of Ripoli some 
addenda entitled by him " Huomini singulari." The 
"singular" men treated by him are thirteen of the 
celebrities of Florence from a.d. 1400 onwards. Five 
are literati and eight artists, among whom are Luca 
della Robbia and Filippo Brunelleschi. On seeing 
the last MS., Milanesi was drawn to compare it with 
the MS. of the anonymous life which Moreni used 
for his "Due Vite," etc., and he found it written in 
the same hand as the Codex of Ripoli. He then 
went to the Archives of State, and examined the Portate 
al Catasto of 1470 to 1481 of the Quarter of Santo Spirito, 
and found Tuccio Manetti s papers written in the same 
hand as the " Huomini singulari," etc., and the " Novella 
di Grasso." Besides this he compared two letters written 
by Manetti to Lorenzo il Magnifico which are in the 
very same hand. All this is very convincing. Manetti 
was thus quite a young man when Brunelleschi was 
old ; but he knew him, and, being a literary man, was 
quite competent to write his life. 



viii PREFACE 

Baldinucci's life of Brunelleschi, published by Moreni 
in his " Due Vite inedite di Filippo di Ser Brunellesco " 
is little more than a paraphrase of this old MS. of 
Manetti's, with a few notes and one or two documents. 
The short anonymous notice of our architect in the 
"Serie degli Uomini illustri, tom. ii., p. i, Firenze, 
1770," is also drawn from the same source. Vasari is 
a little more voluminous ; but, as far as absolute facts 
or proofs go, he adds but little to Maiietti. 

A dark veil of obscurity still entirely shrouds 
Brunelleschi's early life in Rome from us. Beyond 
the facts that for several years he was more often in 
Rome than in Florence, that he worked with a watch- 
maker there to keep himself, and studied among the 
ruins all his spare time, nothing whatever is known 
of his stay there. I have caused search to be made 
in the public archives, and a friend has kindly made 
investigations in the archives of the Vatican, but the 
result in both cases is nil. Brunelleschi evidently did 
no public work in those early days, being only an 
unknown apprentice, but it would be interesting to 
know what Pope Eugenius IV. wanted him for. 

Of course, the great modern authority on Brunelleschi 
is Von Fabriczy's " Filippo Brunelleschi sein Leben und 
seine Werke ; Stuttgart, Cotta, 1892," which only fell 
into my hands when my book was nearly finished. It 
is a mass of research, which appears to have collected 
every possible mention of the architect from books, 
documents, and MSS., collating the different old MSS. 
with true German precision. The extracts given by 
Fabriczy from Italian documents and codices proved 
a great assistance to my own subsequent research. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 



List of Illustrations x 

Bibliography xii 

Chapter I. The Family of Brunellesco - - i 

IL Youth and Education - - - - 5 

III. Brunelleschi as a Sculptor - - 15 

IV. FiLippo Learns from the Ancients - 25 
V. Artist Life in Florence and Rome - 28 

VI. First Thoughts of the Great Dome 38 

VII. The Dome Rises 59 

VIII. Brunelleschi as Master of Men - 70 

IX. Brunelleschi as City Architect - 83 

X. Brunelleschi as Church-Builder - 98 

XI. Brunelleschi as a Palace-Builder - 116 

XIL Brunelleschi as a Military Engineer 130 

XIII. Death, and the Heritage he left to 

THE World - - - - - 142 

Catalogue of Works - - - - - - 149 

Appendix: Documents 155 

Index 157 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



I. Medallion portrait of Brunelleschi, by 

Andrea da Buggiano . . . Frontispiece 
II. Brunelleschi's House in the Via degli 

Agli Florence 4 

III. Filippo Brunelleschi, Statue on Fislzzsl 

del Duomo, by Pampaloni . . Florence 12 

IV. The Silver Dossal of the Altar . . Pistoja 14 
V. Crucifix carved in wood - . . Florence 18 

VI. The Sacrifice of Abram, by Ghiberti - Florence 22 
VII. The Sacrifice of Abram, by Brunel- 
leschi Florence 22 

VIII. An Antique Sarcophagus, on which is 

represented a Combat of Amazons . Cortona 32 

IX. The Duomo Florence 74 

X. Vasari's Loggia of the Palazzo di 

Parte Guelfa Florence 88 

XI. The Loggia of San Paolo . . . Florence 94 

XII. The Church of San Lorenzo . . Florence 98 

XIII. Interior of the same .... Florence 98 

XIV. The Old Sacristy in San Lorenzo . Florence 98 
XV. The Capital of a Column, by Brunel- 
leschi Fiesole 100 

XVI. The Cloister of San Lorenzo . . Florence 100 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



XI 



PLATB 

XVII. 

XVIII. 

XIX. 

XX. 

XXI. 

XXII. 

XXIII. 
XXIV. 

XXV. 
XXVI. 

XXVII. 
XXVIII. 

XXIX. 
XXX. 



XXXI. 

XXXII. 

XXXIII. 
XXXIV. 

xxxv: 

XXXVI. 

XXXVII. 

XXXVIII. 

XXXIX. 

XL. 

XLI. 



The Capella Pazzi, Santa Croce 

Vestibule of the same 

The Entrance to the same 

The Church of Santo Spirito 

Interior of the same . 

The Tribune of the same 
Church 

Another View of the Interior . 

Brunelleschi's Design for the 
Fa9ade of the same Church . 

Fa9ade of the Badia at Fiesole . 

The Sacristy Doorway 

The Cloister of the same . 

The Capital 'of a Column in the 
External Loggia . 

A Capital from the Cloister 

Palazzo Busini, now Quaratesi 
(as it was in the seventeenth 
century) .... 

Villa Reale della Petraja . near 

The Palazzo Pazzi, now Quara- 
tesi 

A Window in the same Palace . 

The Cortile in the same Palace . 

The Palazzo Pitti (as altered by 
the Grand Dukes) . 

The Rear View of the same 

TheCastello .... 

The Courtyard of the same 

The Castello San Giorgio . 

Fortifications of Vico Pisano . 

Gateway at Lastra, and part of 
the Fortress at Malmantile . 



PAGB 

Florence 102 

Florence 104 

Florence 104 

Florence 106 

Florence 108 

Florence 108 

Florence 1 10 

Florence no 

Fiesole 112 

Fiesole 112 

Fiesole 114 

Fiesole 114 

Fiesole 114 



Florence 116 

Florence 118 

Florence 120 

Florence 120 

Florence 120 

Florence 122 

Florence 126 

Milan 138 

Milan 140 

Mantua 136 

134 



132 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

D'Agincourt. " Storia delle Arti della decadenza al loro 

risorgimento." 
Cbsarb Guasti. "La Cupola di Santa Maria del Fiore 

illustrata." Firenze, 1887. 
Abate Moreni. " Due Vite del Brunelleschi." 
Baldinucci. " La Vita di Filippo Brunelleschi." Firenze, 

l8l2. 

Gaetano Milanesi. '< Opere istoriche, edite ed inedite di 

Antonio Manetti matematico ed architetto." Firenze. 
Milanese. " Cpmmenti suUe vite ecc. di Vasari." Sansoni, 

Firenze, l[5||8. 
Francesco Milizia. " Memorie degli Architetti, antichi 

e modemi." Parma, 1781. 
Commre. Carocci. " Studii Storici sul Centro di Firenze." 

Firenze, 1889. 
Giuseppe del Rosso. ** L' Osservatore Fiorentino sugli 

edifizii della sua Patria." Ricci, Firenze^ 1821. 
Gio. CiNELLi. " Bellezze di Firenze." Pistoja, 1678. 
JoDico DELLA Badia. '< Raccolta delle migliori fabbriche 

antiche e modeme di Firenze ecc." Ferroni, Firenze, 

1876. Extra folio. 
C. J. Cavallucci. "S. Maria del Fiore. Storia docu- 

mentata." Cirri, Firenze, 1881. 8vo. 



4 



BIBLIOGRAPHY xiii 

J. BuRCKHARDT. ** Le Cicerone. Guide de Tart antique 

et de I'art modeme en Italie.*' Trans, par Auguste 

Gerard. Firmin Dictot, Paris. 
Von Fabriczy. ** Filippo Brunelleschi sein Leben und 

seine Werke." Cotta, Stuttgart, 1892. 
Clbmbntb Lupi. <'L* Opera di S. Maria del Fiore." 

Mariotti, Pisa, 1887. 
Anon. <' La Metropolitana Fiorentina lUustrata.** Molini, 

Firenze, 1820. 
Anon. " Cento novelle antiche." Tome II. " Novella 

del Grasso Legnajolo." Vanni, Firenze, 1782. 
Giovanni Battista Nblli. "Discorsi di Architettura." 

Firenze, 1753. 
CicoGNARA. " Storia della Scultura." Vol. IV. 
" Archivio Storico Italiano." " II libro di Antonio Billi 

Anno 1 891." Tomo I. 
" Archivio Storico Lombardo." Tome XI. " II Castello 

di Milano." 
Anon. " Serie degli Uomini Illustri.*' Tomo II. Firenze, 

1770. 



CHRONOLOGY 



CHIEFLY TAKEN FROM DOCUMENTAL EVIDENCE PUBLISHED BY 
MILANESI AND GUASTI 



1377. Birth of Filippo. 

1398, Dec. 19. Sworn as member of the Guild of Silk Mercers. 

1401. Competes for the commission of the bronze doors of the 

Baptistery. 
1404, July 2. Matriculates in the Arte degli Orafi (Goldsmiths). 

1404, November 10. Is one of a council called to consider the 
work of the brackets and superstructure of the nave of the 
cathedral then in progress. 

1405, February 16. This council was broken up and Filippo and 
others dismissed from office. 

1409 (?). Makes two half-figures of prophets in silver for the super- 
altar at Pistoja. 

141 7, May 19. Is paid by the Opera del Duomo 10 gold florins 
for his advice and plans. 

14 17. Council of masters, in which Brunelleschi first broaches his 
idea of erecting a free dome and is ridiculed. 

141 8, August 19. Prize of 200 florins offered for the best model of 
the cupola, to be sent in by September 31. 

14 1 8, August 31. Begins his model. 

1419, July II. Received 15 lire 15 soldi towards the expenses of 
his brick model. 

1420, Begins the Pazzi Chapel. 

1420, April 3. General council to examine all the models. 
1420, April. Puts his plan before the Opera. Model accepted. 
1420, April 16. Brunelleschi, Ghiberti, and Battista d' Antonio (head 

of the works) elected as joint pram/edi/on for the building of 

the cupola at 3 florins a month each« 



CHRONOLOGY xv 

1420, April 24. Receives 10 gold florins for bis plan. 

1420, May 20. Preparations for the work begun on this day. 

1 42 1, March 23. Brunelleschi received 100 gold florins for an 
invention of a new machine for drawing up materials. 

1 42 1. Designs a portico for the Foundling Hospital. 
1 42 1, June 19. Obtains a patent for three years' sole profit of the 
badahne^ a boat invented by him to bring marbles by river. 

1 42 1, August 7. The cupola was begun. 

1422, November 6. They begin the brick portion of the cupola. 

1423, April 15. Receives 10 gold florins for an improved model of 
a machine crane. 

1423, July 5. Is paid for model of the timber girders. 
1423, August 27. Is paid 100 gold florins for the girders. 
1423, September 24. Designs for second row of girders approved. 
1425, February 5. He and Ghiberti re-elected zs firowedttori, 
1425, June 28. Ghiberti's salary stopped. 

1425, August 16. Foundation-stone of San Lorenzo laid. 

1426, August 16. Brunelleschi goes to Pisa. 

1426, September 12. Goes to Lastra with Battista. 

1427, May. Goes to Castelfranco to see that certain marbles for 
the Duomo are sent on from Pisa and Carrara. 

1427, May 13. Designs a tabernacle for the Church of S. Jacopo 

in Campo. 
1427, November 13. Goes to Volterra. 

1427-28, January 7. Is authorized to begin placing the girders. 
1428-29. Church of Santo Spirito begun. 
1429, March 18. Goes to Lucca in service of the Ten of War. 

1429, Sept. 22. Ordered to make a model of the whole Duomo. 

1430, February 15. Sent to inspect the fortresses of Rencine 
Staggia, and Castellina, in Val d' Elsa. 

1430, March 2. Sent to the camp at Lucca. 

1430-31, February 16. Brunelleschi's salary reduced to half. 

1430, February 4. The brick and mortar model of the cupola 
built on the Piazza del Duomo in 1419 removed. 

1 43 1, April 2. Leave to go to Ferrara and Mantua. 

1432, June 27. Commanded to finish a model for the lantern. 
1432, December 9. Is told to order the lavabo and marble shelves 

for the sacristy of the Duomo ; his adopted son Andrea da 
Buggiano has the commission for the former. 



xvi CHRONOLOGY 

1433) June 17. The floor beneath the dome is paved. 
1434. Finishes a model of the church and dome. 

1434. Called as architect for church of the Angeli. 

1435, April 3. Goes to Mantua for twenty days. 
1435-36. Goes with the head of the works to Pisa. 

1435. Designs the new choir of the Cathedral of Florence. 

1436. Goes to Campiglio to see marble for lantern. 

1436, August 14. Makes model for fortifications of Vico Pisano. 
1436, August 31. The cupola closed. Great rejoicings. 
1436, October 26. Roofing-in of the tribunes of Duomo. 
1436, October 5. Commission to make passage to organ-loft. 
1436, December 31. His model of the lantern approved. 

1439, March 22. Goes to Vico Pisano about Porta del Soccorso. 

1440, June 14. Sent to Pisa about the fortifications. 
1443. Brunelleschi elected so\^ prauveditore of the cupola. 

1445. '^^ ^^^ marble of the lantern is placed. 

1446, April 15. Death of Brunelleschi. 



BRUNELLESCHI 

CHAPTER I 

THE FAMILY OF BRUNELLESCO 

" FiLiPPO Di Ser Brunellesco Architetto fu della 
nostra cittd, ed a mia di, e conobbilo, e parlaigli ; e fu 
di buone genti, ed onorevoli, ed in quella nacque negli 
anni del Signore 1377, ^ visse il piii del tempo, ed in 
quella mori secondo la carne."* 

This is the way in which Brunelleschi's once anony- 
mous and contemporary biographer — now known to be 
Antonio Manetti — begins his life, a quaint and simple 
chronicle of the great man's doings, which may, I 
think, be fairly taken as a foundation for his biography, 
when amplified by later and more exact documentary 
evidence. 

There is a pithy meaning in the sentence " in quella 
mori secondo la carne," for it is a certain fact that 
nothing of him died except the flesh. His works and 

• • ' Filippo, the architect, son of Ser Brunellesco, was of our city. He 
lived in my time, and I knew and have talked with him. He was of a 
good and honourable family, and was bom in that city in the year of 
our Lord 1377. He lived there almost all his life, and there, according 
to the flesh, he died.*' 
A 



2 BRUNELLESCHI 

inventions, even his actions, and the semblance of his 
person, all live still. He was not, like Giotto, a genius 
raised from a peasant, for his family was among the 
aristocracy of Florence at that era. Like most of the 
artists in that land of sopranyms, he has come down to 
posterity under a name not his own surname, but I 
doubt if anyone to whom he is familiar would know 
him as Filippo Lapi. Yet that was his right name. 
His ^gdigree, as traced by Milanesi (Vasari, vol. i., 
p. 386), shows him as a great-grandson of a certain 
doctor named Tura di Cambio dei Lapi. Tura's son 
was named Lippo, which was the Florentine short for 
Filippo, as Tura is for Ventura. Lippo Lapi married 
Lippa Brunelleschi and became the father of Ser 
Brunellesco Lapi, who was christened by his mother's 
surname. Ser Brunellesco married in his turn Giuliana, 
daughter of Giovanni Spini, a family once faimous and 
aristocratic in Florence. They had two sons, our 
Filippo, and his brother Maso, who was a simple 
person, and became a priest. Filippo was born in 

X377-* 

Thus we see that Brunelleschi's family name was 
Lapi, but, according to Italian custom, he was called 
Philip of Brunellesco (just as the Welsh say John ap 
Thomas to this day) ; and when he became famous the 
name clung to him, while that of " Lapi " was lost sight 
of. Nevertheless these Lapi were connected with the 

* Proof of this is given in his statement of property for the Catasto 
(Tax Office) of 1427, when he gives his age as fifty. The register of 
the Badia has an interesting entry recording the family: "Domina 
Giuliana, filia quondam Joannis domini Guglielmi de Spinis, uxor 
Ser Brunellesco Lippi, Notarii civis florentini; filippus et tomasus 
eorum filii " (Gaye, *• Carteggio inedito d' Artisti," vol. i., p. 114 note). 



HIS FAMILY 3 

ancient noble family of Lapi-Aldobrandi. We gather 
this from the will of Lippa dei Brunelleschi, which is 
preserved to this day. One clause in it is a legacy to 
"Carlo, Bartolommeo, e Alamanno filii quondam Ser 
Tommasii Aldobrandi ejus conjunctisper lineam mascu- 
linam."* A further proof is that Filippo's house was 
among those of the Aldobrandi, near the Piazza degli 
Agli, and his arms were the same as theirs — Shield 
vert; a wavy of three, azure; two fig-leaves vert on a 
chief or. This has been understood to imply that the 
family came from Ficherola in the Ferrara district, the 
waves figuring the river Po. Milanesi seems to prove 
that the family originated in a Maestro Cambio di Tura, 
who had three sons — ^Tura, Giunta, and Feo. The first 
was the father of Lippo, our Brunelleschi's grandfather ; 
Giunta the father of Aldobrando, the head of the Aldo- 
brandi branch ; and Feo of the Fei Arrighi. 

The Florentine archives only go back to Lippo di 
Tura, Filippo's grandfather, so it is to be supposed the 
family came from elsewhere. Now, the name Ventura, 
shortened to Tura, was prominent among the Sienese 
builders and artists for centuries ; the first Ventura was 
son of Dietisalvi, of Rapolano, who worked in 1267, 
and had a son Andrea. There were other relatives, 
Ghino and Ceffo di Ventura, employed there in 1318, 
and others, Angelo and Simone di Ghino Ventura, in 
1330. The first Ventura di Dietisalvi was probably 
descended from Dietisalvi who designed the Tower of 
Pisa, so that if Brunellesco was of this family his taste 
for architecture is accounted for. 

But to return to Brunelleschi's own father, who was a 

♦ Baldinueci, " Vita di F. Brunellesco," p. 156 note. 
A Z 



4 BRUNELLESCHI ; 

man of standing in Florence, and much respected. He 
matriculated in the Arte dei Giudici e Notai in 1357, 
and later held office in the Council of Ten, or the Balia 
— the War Office of those times. This council had to 
furnish supplies for the soldiers in time of war, super- 
intend their pay, and engage condottieri from foreign 
countries. In quest of these Ser Brunellesco had to 
journey to Germany, France, Flanders, and even 
England, and succeeded so well that he was employed 
by the republic on other political missions. Thus, in 
1367 he was sent by the Signoria to ascertain the 
movements of the Emperor Carlo IV. and his intended 
entry into Italy. For this Ser Brunellesco had orders 
to go first to the Marchese di Ferrara, thence to the 
Lord of Padua, next to Vienna, where he was to find 
out the Emperor's plans, follow him as far as Friuli, 
and thence return speedily to Florence with his news. 
The books of " Introits and Expenses of the Commune " 
register the cost of this mission under the heading " Ser 
Brunellesco Lippi, Ambasciator pro comuni Florentise 
transmissus ad partes Alamanniae." The same books 
prove other embassies to Lombardy in 1368, and again 
in 1384 ; and to the Romagna in 1384. 

The Brunelleschi family was a wealthy one, and 
possessed many houses in Florence. There was a row 
of houses opposite Or San Michele, which reached from 
San Bartolommeo to the Canto dei Cini, and a house 
in Via Larga (now Via Cavour) on the left hand going 
towards San Marco. This was where Ser Brunellesco 
lived, and it had been the home of his father and grand- 
father before him. 

Our artist Filippo possessed a house of his own, in 




BRUNELLESCHI S HOUSE, FLORENCE 
(Said to have been built by himself in the Via degli Agli) 



Private photo 



Plate II 



YOUTH AND EDUCATION 5 

which he lived and died. It was near the ancient 
church of San Michele Berteldi, by the Piazza degli 
Agli, where the houses of his kinsfolk, the Aldobrandi, 
were situated* (Plate II.). 

The tombs of the family for several generations are 
in San Marco, between the principal entrance and the 
pulpit, and were marked by a slab with the arms of 
the family — Two green fig-leaves above waves of water. 
Since the new pavement was placed, this slab has 
disappeared. 



CHAPTER II 

YOUTH AND EDUCATION 

FiLiPPO's education was of that restive kind which so 
often falls to the lot of a genius — the father's ideals 
pulling one way, the boy's instincts and inclinations 
another. Ser Brunellesco, being a member of a learned 
profession, not to mention his rank as Ambassador of 
State, was, of course, anxious for the boy to become a 
man of letters. Consequently, as soon as he had learned 
to read and write, he was placed in one of the best 
humanist schools of the day. But the belles-lettres did 
not interest him ; he neglected his classes, and often 
became so absent-minded over his lessons that he either 
did not hear or understand them. We are told he 
studied the Scriptures diligently, and now and then the 

* This house, of which we give a photograph in its present dis- 
mantled state, was of good solid fourteenth-century architecture. It is 
believed to be Brunelleschi's own design. 



6 BRUNELLESCHI 

poets ; but his greatest pleasure was in the art of design, 
and instead of construing Horace, he would be found 
drawing houses and geometrical figures. His father 
was a wise man, and seeing the lad would never rise in 
his own guild of notaries and judges, which required a 
high grade of classic and literary training, he gave him 
his choice of a career, for in those days even rich men's 
sons were not educated for elegant indolence. Every 
young man on finishing his school curriculum was ap- 
prenticed to one or other of the civic industrial guilds, 
or artu Indeed, a Florentine who was not member of 
one of the arti had no civil votes or rights. 

On December 19, 1398, young Filippo was sworn as 
a member of the "Arte della Seta"; but he chose to 
graduate among the goldsmiths, who were a branch 
of the same guild. His matriculation in oreficeria is 
dated July 2, 1404. This choice gave him a chance of 
full artistic training, for the guild included not only 
modellers and workers in metal, but painters as well. 

To understand the state of the case, a slight digression 
is here needful. In the olden days when all the fine 
arts were combined in the Lombard Guild, which was 
universal, and which gave its members the privileges 
of citizenship wherever they lived, there were no civic 
or local art guilds. But in time each city in turn formed 
its own distinct branches. Florence instituted her Arte 
dei Maestri di Pietra e Legname in 1358, the artists 
from the Lombard Lodge of Lucca having been employed 
before that time; and Siena her Arte dei Maestri di 
Pietra in 1441, because she found the Lombard Guild 
had its interests outside the city. Venice founded hers 
still later. The Sienese painters had seceded from the 



YOUTH AND EDUCATION 7 

Lombard architects in 1355 ; but in Florence there was 
never a company of painters till Cosimo founded the 
Academy of the Belle Arti, and that had no connec- 
tion with the politics or civil rights of its members as 
the old arti had. Consequently, if the artists of the 
brush wished to be considered as citizens at all, they 
had to join one of the existing guilds. Some went into 
that of the Medici e Speziali, and others into the ranks 
of the Orefici, which had been incorporated with the 
Guild of Silk- Merchants. The seven greater arts were 
judges and notaries, calimala or merchants, doctors and 
apothecaries, money-changers and bankers, wool-mer- 
chants, silk-merchants, and furriers. 

In 1282 the fourteen minor arts which gave the work- 
ing classes some minor privileges were instituted. These 
were butchers, hosiers, blacksmiths, tanners and shoe- 
makers, masons and stone-cutters (this has nothing to 
do with the art guild of Maestri di Pietra e Legname 
founded in 1358), wine-sellers, bakers, oil-merchants, 
dry-salters, linen-drapers, locksmiths, armourers, car- 
penters, and innkeepers. 

No record remains to prove under which of the gold- 
smiths Brunelleschi worked. Vasari says it was a friend 
of Ser Brunellesco ; others opine that it was Ghiberti's 
foster-father Bartolo, and that the boy was placed under 
him to learn to draw. He did much more than this, 
however, for, transplanted to this congenial soil, Filippo's 
talents blossomed forth in all directions ; not only could 
he cut and set gems with the best of the goldsmiths, but 
his designs for gold work were most varied and artistic ; 
his modelling both in relief and in round was marvellous. 
As Manetti says (p. 294) : " In that art he soon became 



8 BRUNELLESCHI 

universal, owing to his good grounding in design, for 
which he had marvellous talent. He became in a short 
time a perfect master of niello, smalto, emblazonment, 
and relief, also in cutting and setting gems; in fact, 
he succeeded in everything he touched, in a manner 
quite wonderful for his age." 

He did not confine himself to mere manual work, but 
studied all the sciences necessary to the artist. Mathe- 
matics and design combined, led the talented young man 
to his discoveries in perspective. Indeed, Manetti gives 
him the credit of either the invention or revival of the 
science, which Paolo Uccello, twenty years his junior, 
did much to perfect. 

The first scientific design he made in perspective was 
of the Baptistery of Florence. To draw it he stood 
within the portal of the Duomo. It was so finely done, 
showing all the inlaid work of black and white marble, 
that no miniature could have been more finished; 
the view included all the part of the piazza from the 
Misericordia to the Canto di Paglia and the column of 
S. Zenobio. He put in the skies with burnished silver, 
which reflected the real clouds being carried by the 
wind, and, as the chronicler says, "gave great reality 
to the scene." 

Not only did Brunelleschi invent (or rediscover) the 
rules of perspective, but he invented a wholly original 
method of looking at such drawings. Fearful lest be- 
holders should. mistake the point of vision, he made a 
hole in his picture, which was painted on a thick panel 
of wood. The hole, which was just at the point of 
vision, was funnel-shaped, the wider orifice being at 
the back of the picture. The beholder had to put his 



YOUTH AND EDUCATION 9 

eye at the back of this hole, and hold a mirror the size 
of the design at arms' length, facing the picture. Thus 
he saw it reflected in the mirror with a stereoscopic 
eifect of depth and reality. As the writer says: "You 
seem to see it in very truth, and I have had it in my 
own hand, and have seen it several times in my days, 
so I can bear witness to it." 

Filippo made another design on a larger scale of the 
Palazzo Vecchio, which he took from the corner of 
Calimala, near Or San Michele, but this was provided 
with no sight-hole and reflector. " One might ask," says 
Manetti, " why he did not make for this picture, which 
was equally drawn in perspective, that little sight-hole, 
as he did to that of the Baptistery. This is by reason of 
the picture being so large — there being so many things to 
represent in it — ^that it would be impossible for a person 
to hold the picture with one hand. Nor would the arm 
of a man be long enough to get the mirror at the right 
distance to reflect it, nor strong enough to hold it 
steady." 

Only one effort of Brunelleschi's in painting is 
vaguely chronicled. From the Gaddi Codex, Fabriczy 
(p. 443) quotes : " And in the house of a Florentine 
gentleman he painted with his own hand a picture of 
our Blessed Lady, a miraculous thing" (cosa mira- 
colosa).* 

* The only existing specimen of Brunelleschi's drawings known is in 
the room of original sketches in the Uffizi Gallery. In the revolving 
frame, No. 509, Design 212, is a very rough note of the proportion of 
the arches of the chapels in San Lorenzo, in regard to the great pier. 
It gives in a few lines, roughly drawn, a pier at the comer of the tribune 
with half an arch, and a bit of a foreshortened arch at right angles to 
it. At the side of the pier is a shorter Corinthian pilaster with the 



lo BRUNELLESCHI 

Vasari has a very pretty story that the great scientist, 
Paolo Toscanelli, who is said to have given Columbus 
the advice to " sail to the West to find the East," and 
so sent him to discover America, was Brunelleschi's 
master in geometry and mathematics. He says they 
met at a supper-party in the garden of a friend, and 
that Filippo was so struck with the geometrician's con- 
versation that he formed a friendship with him, and 
became his scholar ; that, as Filippo had no book-learn- 
ing, Toscanelli taught him by practical demonstration, 
and that Filippo imbibed the science so rapidly that his 
logic often astonished his master. The contemporary 
author (Manetti), who knew Brunelleschi, says nothing 
about this instruction, and for a good reason. When 
Brunelleschi, in 1404, was already a qualified master, 
Paolo Toscanelli was a boy of seven years old. He was 
born in 1397, twenty years after our architect, who in 
140 1 was already employed on restorations in the Palazzo 
della Parte Guelfa, and must certainly have studied 
both geometry and mathematics, 

Vasari's assertion that he had no book-learning also 
requires qualification. There were certainly two books 
he cared for extremely — Dante and the Bible. Vasari 
himself says his memory for quoting Scripture was 
prodigious, and that Toscanelli used to say "Filippo 
talked like St. Paul come to life again." His delight 
in Dante was not so much a poetical as a scientific 

spring of the lower arch of one of the side-chapels. The windows 
above the chapels are indicated by arched outlines on one side of the 
drawing, and square ones on the other. The architect was evidently 
only trying the effect of both forms, and in the end adopted neither, as 
the windows are circular. 



YOUTH AND EDUCATION ii 

pleasure. He enjoyed making mathematical plans of 
circles, sites, and "bolge," with their measurements, 
and talked for hours demonstrating and comparing 
them. 

Before leaving his youth, we must say a few words as 
to the personal appearance and qualities of Filippo 
Brunelleschi. 

He was one of the " little great men '* whose minds 
rule the world through the physical drawback of a 
mean personality. Vasari begins his biography, and 
Baldinucci ends his, by dwelling on the extreme plain- 
ness of Filippo's person, softening it by many proverbial 
sentiments, such as " a lump of earth often hides a vein 
of gold." "Nature does not feel obliged to enclose 
every gentle soul in a beautiful body." Vasari makes 
merry over him by saying he was as plain as " Messer 
Forese di Rabatto e Giotto,"* but of such elevated 
genius that he seemed sent from heaven to bring back 
that true form to architecture, which for centuries had 
been lost. 

The most authentic portrait of Filippo is, of course, 
the mask in plaster taken from his features after death, 
which is in the Opera del Duomo. The one which 
most closely assimilates him is the medallion relief 
in the Duomo, by Buggiano, his pupil and adopted 
son.t There is a good engraved profile likeness of him 

* Messer Forese di Rabatto was a learned lawyer of remarkably ugly 
exterior, the subject together with Giotto (who was equally plain) of 
Boccaccio's Novella V., Giomata VI. He is said to have been small 
and deformed, with a fiat and wrinkled face, but so learned in law that 
he won the respect of everyone. 

t See frontispiece. 



12 BRUNELLESCHI 

in the " Serie degli uomini i pi£l illustri . . . incisi in 
ramo," an anonymous work published in Florence in 
1770. Cinelli* speaks of a portrait of Brunelleschi, 
together with that of Donatello and other famous men 
of that time, which once existed in a fresco in the 
first cloister of the Carmine. When the cloister was 
squared (riquadrato), a wall was built up without 
injuring the pictures. It would be interesting to find 
whether that fresco is still in existence. 

Pampaloni's statue by the wall of the Seminary on 
Piazza del Duomo gives a too majestic appearance to 
be quite true to the original (Plate III.). Vasari, in 
his frescoes in the Palazzo Vecchio, has painted the 
portraits of both Brunelleschi and Ghiberti holding the 
model of San Lorenzo. He represents Filippo kneeling, 
dressed in a purple cloak, with the hood over his head. 
Lorenzo is a bald man standing by, holding the model 
together with him.t 

As for moral virtues, Filippo seems to have been an 
epitome of them. Vasari tells us he was adorned with 
virtues, the principal of which was friendship, for no 
one was more kind and lovable than he. He judged 
without passion, and where he recognised the merits of 
others, he subordinated his own [interest to that of his 
friends. He knew himself, and showed others the high 
grade of his endowments. He was the enemy of vice, 
and lover of all that was good. He never spent time in 
vain, but was always doing something either for him- 

♦ Cinelli, " Bellezze di Firenze." p. 336. 

f Vasari himself describes these figures in a curious little book he 
wrote entitled " Ragionamenti sopra 1' Invenzioni dipinte in Firenze 
nel Palazzo di Loro Altezze Serenissime, ora Palazzo Vecchio." It is 
in the form of a conversation between himself and the Grand-Duke. 




Alinari photo 



Plate III 



Piazza del Ditomo, Florence 



FILIPPO BRUNELLESCHI 
(A statue by Pampaloni) 



YOUTH AND EDUCATION 13 

self or for others, or else visiting his friends or assisting 
them. 

Baldinucci, repeating much of this, adds that no one 
could be more acute in conversation or in wit, and so 
generous was he in judgment that he would waive his 
own opinion in favour of others, even though he knew 
his own work to be better, and was keenly alive to other 
people's bad drawing and designs; that he was so 
humble that he never grew vain even in the midst of 
the applause of the whole city. '* One never heard 
him praise his own works, or condemn those of others." 
" He esteemed everyone, and was amiable to all." 

This seems slightly exaggerated, and is not quite 
borne out by the events of his life. That he envied 
Ghiberti, and was anything but amiable to him, was 
apparent. That he did not like the masters of the 
Opera, and was extremely restive with them, is also un- 
deniable. 

Manetti, who knew him personally, struck a much 
truer note : " Notwithstanding that he outshone others 
in many things, by means of which he led his own 
times and succeeding ages, yet one never heard him 
boast nor vaunt himself; but when occasion arose he 
demonstrated his superiority by facts. He was never 
ill-tempered, unless he was much provoked, either by being 
put to shame or insulted. He was loving to his friends, 
and liked to praise those who desired his company and 
received him willingly ; and in this, as in other things, 
he was very clear-sighted and sensitive." 

Here we get precisely Filippo's weak points, as well as 
his strong ones. Every action of his life shows that he 
had a stronger belief in the power of Filippo Brunei- 



14 BRUNELLESCHI 

leschi than in that of any other man living- Where this 
innate power was recognised by others, he was amiable ; 
where it was ignored or disbelieved in, he was displeased; 
but so sure was he of his own strength that he forced 
even his strongest adversaries and fiercest opponents to 
recognise it. I fear he was not above putting his rivals 
to public shame in his determination to assert his own 
supremacy. He evidently disliked rivals on his own 
ground, but could generously recognise merit in other . 
fields. His two greatest friends, Masaccio and Dona- 
tello, were not his rivals, Masaccio's art being quite 
distinct from his own, and Donatello a young wor- 
shipper at the shrine of Filippo's genius. He was 
jealous of Ghiberti, who, after defeating him in com- 
petition, was associated with him in a work of which 
he rightly claimed the whole credit ; and he was con- 
temptuous of Leon Alberti, who clung to Vitruvius and 
the schools, where he aimed at originality in archi- 
tecture. There was also a strong element of selfishness, 
or, rather, self-seeking, in his character — a reluctance to 
let anyone else profit by his knowledge. He ev6n re- 
fused to divulge his discovery of a means of moving 
more easily the lairge blocks of marble, which would 
have been of inestimable use to architects, because he 
did not wish others to share the benefits with him. 

In fact his motto wasAut Casar, aut nullus, and it was 
in a sense justified : the imperial power of genius was 
within him, and he knew that it must assert itself. His 
character was entirely different from that of any of his 
friends — from Masaccio's happy-go-lucky insouciance ; 
from Ghiberti's painstaking, nervous striving after the 
highest, and doubt in his own power to attain to it ; and 



AS A SCULPTOR iS 

from Donatello's happy genius, that always struck true, 
though he did not know his own power, and his un- 
selfish nature, that was enthusiastic over other people's 
success and diffident of his own. Brunelleschi was 
never diffident of his own powers, but he disliked 
expending them for the benefit of others. 



CHAPTER III 

BRUNELLESCHI AS A SCULPTOR 

FiLiPPo's earliest bias in art was undoubtedly towards 
sculpture, and it seems to have been more a matter of 
temper than of temperament, which decided whether he 
should be the finest architect of his age, or a tolerably 
good sculptor, though probably not the best of all. His 
chagrin after the competition for the doors of the 
Duomo was the spur that sent him into his natural 
groove. Beyond his drawings in perspective, which, 
after all, belonged to architecture more than to art, we 
have a mention of only one painting done by him, 
although he did good work in smalto, which is in effect 
a style of miniature painting ; but with encouragement 
—on which he depended greatly — he might have been 
renowned in sculpture, an art to which gold-working is 
much allied. 

It was probably during his apprenticeship, or on his 
matriculation as a master in the Arte deir Orefice, 
1404, that he had the commission for the two silver 
half-figures of prophets on the super-altar at Pistoja 
(Plate IV.) — a splendid work in which many of the 



i6 BRUNELLESCHI 

fourteenth-century artists took part. Ciampi (" Sagrestia 
de' Belli Arredi," pp. 80, 82) dates them 1409, but he 
has no documental proof, and as both Baldinucci and 
the contemporary biographer lay great stress on Filippo's 
extreme youth, although a master at the time, the date , 
of 1404, soon after his matriculation, is most likely the 
true one. He was then twenty-seven years of age.. The 
two reliefs attributed to him are the two dignified half- 
figures of prophets in high relief at the two extremities 
of the line of saints beneath the central statue of the 
superaltar. They were even in his own time judged 
very fine, and showed him as a master in his art. 

Brunelleschi's life during his art apprenticeship must 
have been very pleasant. He was surrounded by men 
of congenial taste; his work was all of the kind he 
loved best — at least, at that time, for his architectural 
talent developed later. He was in touch with all the 
best artists of the time, for his rank as a master in the 
Goldsmith's Guild brought him into relations with the 
Opera, or house of administration of the Guild of 
Maestri di Pietra e Legname, where he met all the 
architects and sculptors then in Florence. He was a 
great friend of Masaccio, to whom he imparted his 
discoveries in perspective ; no doubt the younger of the 
two, who was a boy-student, while Filippo was a full- 
fledged master, looked up to his teacher with that 
respect which he most liked to inspire. 

Lorenzo Ghiberti was within a year of the same age 
as Filippo, and as far as sculpture and gold- work went, 
they worked together, so that it is possible that the 
rivalry between them, which became so marked in later 
life, began even in the studio. 



AS A SCULPTOR 17 

Brunelleschi seems to have been especially fond of 
young Donato di Niccold di Betto Bardi (Donatello, 
or little Donato), who was nine years younger than 
himself. Donatello looked up to the elder artist with 
a worshipping admiration for his genius, which formed 
a great bond between the two, and is so prettily 
illustrated in the oft-told story of the crucifix. The 
character of the two comes out so strongly in this, 
that I feel obliged to repeat it here in spite of its 
being a well-worn tale. The lad Donatello had carved 
in wood a crucifix, which he thought the best piece 
of work he had done yet, and, eager to have it 
appreciated by one whose opinion he valued, he asked 
Filippo to come and see it. The sculptor unveiled his 
Christ, and looked anxiously at his friend's face. Alas ! 
he only saw a smile, as a man might smile at the work 
of a child. The boy appealed to Filippo as a true 
friend to give his opinion, and he, who never shrank 
from saying exactly what he thought, told poor Donato 
that his modelling was so coarse it seemed as if he had 
crucified a peasant. He added that the body of Christ, 
being perfect in all its parts, should be most delicately 
and finely modelled. 

The mortified Donatello naturally took fire at this, 
and told Filippo to get some wood and show him how 
to carve a Christ, if he could. Anything in the nature 
of a challenge was a spur to Brunelleschi. He took 
his young friend at his word, and went home and shut 
himself in his room, carving earnestly at his concep- 
tion of a crucified Saviour. Having at length satis- 
fied himself, he in his turn called in his friend to see 
his work. He made it quite a dramatic surprise by 

B 



i8 BRUNELLESCHI 

merely asking the young man to accompany him home 
to dinner, but saying nothing about his crucifix. The 
two stopped in the old market by the way, and bought 
some eggs, cheese, fruit and nuts for the meal. Giving 
these to Donatello, Filippo sent him on before, while 
he procured the wine. When Donato entered the 
room, the light was falling full on the beautiful carved 
figure of Christ. He stayed a moment in amazement ; 
then, recognising the noble lines of the figure, he opened 
his arms in the true old Tuscan attitude of admiration, 
and forgot all the things he was carrying in his sculptor's 
apron, till Filippo, coming in at the door, and seeing 
everything on the floor, cried : 

" What are you doing, Donato ? How are we to eat 
our dinner if you have broken all the eggs ?" 

"Oh," cried the generous lad, "never mind the 
eggs ; for my part I have had enough," adding sadly, 
" 'Tis true, to you it is given to carve a Christ ; I can 
only make a peasant." 

We give an illustration of this storied crucifix, which, 
if compared with that of Donatello, in Miss Rea's 
volume of this series on that artist, will be seen to have 
better modelling, and more refined and religious feeling, 
though the difference is not so very wide as to have 
caused the younger student so much mortification. 
The date of this incident is not known, but, as Vasari 
speaks of it as preceding the competition for the doors 
of the Baptistery in 1401, it must have been during 
Filippo's apprenticeship — i.e., when he was about 
twenty-four years old, and Ghiberti twenty-three. If 
so, Donatello was only a boy of fifteen, andj^it is not to 
be wondered at that his modelling and technique had 




Alinari photo 



Plate V 



Church of Santa Maria Novella^ Florence 
CRUCIFIX CARVED IN WOOD 



AS A SCULPTOR 19 

not yet reached perfection. Cicognara* thus compares 
the two works: ''Donato's crucifix is rigid, ignoble, 
without abandon and without softness, with neither 
grace nor elevation of idea. The subject is certainly 
a difficult one to express, even for an artist endowed 
by a high ideality, and where Nature has but slightly 
supplied this, it is still more difficult to command the 
hand, Brunelleschi overcame all these difficulties with 
wonderful skill, and the nobility of form and the languid 
lassitude of a gentle and suffering person were expressed 
with such mastery that Donato was seized with wonder." 
Cicognara thinks that this experience was the moving 
cause which afterwards led Donatello to such deep 
study and expression of passionate feeling (Plate V.). 

The crucifix was not the only work he did in com- 
petition with Donatello, if we may believe the older 
biographers. Fabriczy quotes from three codices — the 
Petrei, Strozziana, and Gaddiano, that "a gara di 
Donatello" Filippo (and Donatello) made statues of 
St. Mary Magdalen, and that Filippo's was a marvellous 
work. The Strozziana codex says it is a " cosa eccel- 
lentissima senza comparatione " with that of Donato. 
This work can never be judged again, for, unfortunately, 
it was destroyed in 1470 by the fire in the older church 
of Santo Spirito, which was still being used while 
Brunelleschi's new building was in progress.t 

• Cicognara, " Storia della Scultura," tome ii., cap. ii., p. 43. 

t The cause of the fire was one of the grand spectacular celebra- 
tions which the artists of the time were so fond of designing. It was 
part of a fete got up by Lorenzo del Medici, in honour of the state visit 
of Gian Galeazzo Visconti in Lent on March 13. At the Church of the 
Annunziata they represented the " Annunciation of the Virgin ;" in the 
Carmine the " Ascension of Christ ;" and in Santo Spirito the " Descent 
B Z 



20 BRUNELLESCHI 

The crucifixes led to other works. The Butchers and 
Linen-weavers' Guilds gave the friends a commission 
for -two statues to be placed in their respective niches in 
Or San Michele. The former company chose a St. 
Peter, the latter St. Mark. It is said by Vasari that 
Filippo withdrew from the execution of this commission, 
leaving Donatello to fulfil it alone. Certain it is that 
the debit and credit account of the Linaiuoli (Linen- 
weavers' Guild) proves that the commission and pay- 
ment for St. Mark were made to Donatello.* Probably, 
if it happened soon after the unlucky competition for 
the Baptistery gates, Brunelleschi had still fresh on his 
mind his hasty renunciation of an art in which others ' 
were preferred before him. 

This competition was the turning-point in the life of 
Brunelleschi, the point at which he abandoned sculpture 
and dedicated his genius to architecture. In 1401 the 
Arte della Lana, patrons of the Opera del Duomo and 
all its works, proclaimed a competition for the projected 
new doors of the Baptistery. Any artist in metal who 
wished to compete, was to model and cast in bronze a 
design representing the " Sacrifice of Isaac." The size 
and geometric shape of the framing of the subject was 
given ; all besides was left to the artist himself. A year 
was allowed for the work. 

Filippo Brunelleschi's ambition was immediately fired ; 
he threw himself into the work con amore, and long before 

of the Holy Ghost on the Apostles." Some of the candles on the 
high altar were too near the great edifice of gauze and cotton-wool 
representing the clouds of heaven, and the whole arrangement caught ' 
fire. 
* See Gualandi, " Memorie di Belle Art!," serie iv., pp. 104, 107. 



AS A SCULPTOR 21 

the appointed time his panel was complete. He was of 
an independent mind, and took no counsel of anyone ; 
he neither changed nor modified his first design, but, 
sure of his own inspiration, he modelled rapidly and 
firmly. 

One of his rival competitors was Lorenzo Cione, 
who had been trained in the goldsmith bottega of his 
stepfather Bartolo Ghiberti, where some writers think 
Brunelleschi was also apprenticed. Lorenzo showed 
great talent both in painting and sculpture as well as n 
gold- work. For a year past he had been in the Romagna 
to avoid a visitation of plague, and some political dis- 
turbances in Florence; but on the proclamation of 
the competition his stepfather recalled him at once to 
Florence from Rimini, where he and a friend had been 
painting frescoes for Signor Pandolfo Malatesta. He, 
too, promptly decided to compete, but his methods were 
very different from Brunelleschi's. He had fears and 
doubts which never assailed that strong self-supported 
genius. He was afraid he would never be able to rival 
Filippo, whose talent he recognised; he doubted his 
own powers ; made one design after another, and took 
the opinion of master after master on their merits. He 
changed, improved, polished and touched up so often 
that before he was himself satisfied the day of destiny 
had arrived. His master and foster-father Bartolo took 
a very great interest in his relief, and constantly urged 
his son to polish, improve, and refine the work till it 
reached perfection. 

These two were the real rivals, for the other com- 
petitors never had a chance against them. Vasari says 
in Ghiberti's life, and Baldinucci follows him, that 



22 BRUNELLESCHI 

Donatello sent in a panel which was judged good in 
design but faulty in execution ; but as he does not 
mention the event in the life of Donatello himself, and 
as that artist was only fifteen at the time, Milanesi, on 
Cicognara's authority, doubts the assertion. Jacopo 
della Quercia was a more formidable competitor, being 
a qualified and clever artist of thirty years of age from 
the Sienese school. However, although his relief was 
pronounced to be admirably drawn and well modelled, 
it was defective in the perspective and distribution of 
the grouping. Francesco di Val d' Ambrina's composi- 
tion was poor, and the two others, Simone da CoUe and 
Niccold d' Arezzo, worse still. The choice then lay 
between Brunelleschi and Ghiberti, and each of them 
had his partisans. Some said that Lorenzo Ghiberti's 
might have been done by Polycletes himself, and, 
indeed, no one on studying the two reliefs can deny 
that Ghiberti's has more dignity and religious feeling. 
The angel, which in Filippo's seems to rush fiercely at 
Abraham, in Lorenzo's flies down in peace and mercy. 
Abraham's attitude in the first is impetuous, not to say 
savage; in the second reluctant obedience is visible. 
Filippo makes his attendants waiting with the ass both 
incongruous and indifferent. He has copied one from 
the well-known ancient statue, now in the Uffizi, of 
the boy taking a thorn out of his foot, but he has 
draped him in a Roman toga ; the other man stooping 
near the horse is a Roman soldier with a helmet very 
unsuitable to a story of Abraham, though the modelling 
is very fine indeed (Plates VL and VH.). The judges 
were, however, much struck by this fine modelling, and 
the masterly way in which great difficulties of position 




Brogi photo Bargello., Florence 

THE SACRIFICE OF ABRAM, BY GHIBERTI 
Plate VI 




Brogi photo Bargello^ Florence 

THE SACRIFICE OF ABRAM, BY BRUNELLESCHI 
Plate VII 



AS A SCULPTOR 23 

were overcome. A great and animated discussion took 
place in the large council-room of the Opera, where 
the consuls of the Arte della Lana and the maestri of 
the Opera were to decide. It was at length proposed 
to give the commission jointly to the two artists, it 
being a long and arduous undertaking, and affording 
scope for the genius of both. 

" But to this," says Manetti, " Filippo would never 
consent. Unless the work were to be wholly his own, 
he would not touch it, not being inclined to share his 
honours with anyone else." 

" Then," said the consuls, " we must give the whole 
commission to Lorenzo." 

Brunellesco answered brusquely that if they did not 
give it to him they might, for anything he cared, give it 
to Ghiberti; he should not interfere with their judgment. 
With this he went away, and the commission was 
given to Lorenzo. Vasari, who, being an enthusiastic 
lover of Renaissance architecture, lauds Brunelleschi to 
the skies, goes into ecstasies at his magnanimity in pro- 
nouncing Ghiberti's relief to be much superior to his 
own, and advising the consuls that it was their duty to 
give the commission to his rival. This version is also 
given in the " Serie degli uomini i PiU lUustri," Florence, 
1770 ; but it does not tally with Ghiberti's own account 
of the verdict. In his MS. " Commentario " (Codice 
No. 33, Classe XVII., Magliabecchian Library) he re- 
ports the result in curious old Italian as follows : " The 
palm of victory was conceded to me by all the judges 
and those who were with them. The glory was universally 
given to me without exception by everyone in that great 
council, and on the examination of experts. The operai 



24 BRUNELLESCHI 

who ruled, wished the written opinion of many skilled 
men who were competent to judge ; among them were 
painters, sculptors, and goldsmiths. The judges were 
thirty-four, from the city and the neighbourhood. The 
votes subscribed in my favour were given by consuls 
and operaiy and by all the body of the Arte della Lana, 
which at that time governed the temple of St. Giovanni 
Battista.' 

This, though over -jubilant, is emphatic enough. 
Vasari's version, too, does not tally with either the 
character or future actions of Brunelleschi, which were 
undoubtedly marked by chagrin. He turned away from 
the hall with his faithful young partisan Donatello, 
saying that " he would go to Rome and study an art in 
which Ghiberti could not rival him." Donatello, who 
would at that time have followed his friend to the end 
of the world, decided to accompany him. 

Filippo afterwards made a present of his useless model 
to Cosimo de' Medici (Pater Patriae), who placed it in 
the super-altar of the sacristy of San Lorenzo. The 
Grand-Duke Leopold in later years obtained it from the 
Canons, and the two fateful panels are now side by side 
in the room of Florentine bronzes in the Bargello. 

Had this competition ended otherwise, Michael Angelo 
would never have named the door the " Gate of Para- 
/ dise"; it would have been an incongruous mixture of 

classicality and Scripture. The fate of Italian archi- 
tecture also might never have been changed, for that 
visit to Rome really resulted in the rise of the Renais- 
sance style, in which Brunelleschi was the art-ancestor 
of Michael Angelo. 



ROMAN INFLUENCE 25 

CHAPTER IV 

FILIPPO LEARNS FROM THE ANCIENTS 

Weak characters sink into annihilation under great 
discouragement, but strong ones rise to greater heights 
by making stepping-stones of their failures. When 
Brunelleschi shrugged his shoulders and left sculpture 
behind him at the meeting of the Opera, his belief in 
his own power was not one atom shaken by his rejec- 
tion. He said : " I will go where I can study better 
sculptures than these, and, moreover, learn an art in 
which this rival at least cannot compete with me," 
And he went straight to Rome. Donatello, as we have 
said, was ready to follow him anywhere ; but Rome had 
especial attractions also for him. There were fine 
antique works of art to be studied ; not all that we see 
now, for the Laocoon and others were not found till 
nearly Raphael's time, but quite enough to form a good 
school for a youth who loved art. 

Filippo sold a piece of land to obtain means for the 
journey. How Donatello got funds together I know 
not; possibly his patrons the Martelli helped him. We 
are not told how they travelled — probably, as many 
other artists did, they made a pilgrimage on foot — but 
Manetti gives us a very clear idea of what they did 
when they arrived there. They found work in the 
goldsmiths' shops, where we are told that Brunelleschi 
made several timepieces and alarm clocks, and that the 
multiplicity of springs and ingenious wheels set him 
thinking of larger machines which might be constructed 



26 BRUNELLESCHI 

for carrying or lifting weights, etc. He spent his work- 
ing hours then in the goldsmiths' botteghe, earning 
money for his other and more important studies in 
architecture.* 

While Donatello rarely looked at a building, but made 
drawings of every frieze or statue he came across, 
Brunelleschi was minutely inspecting all the ruins, draw- 
ing plans of them, measuring the thickness of walls, the 
portions of columns and arches, the size and shapes of 
bricks, the dovetailing of blocks of marble, etc., writing 
down all his notes and calculations on strips of parch- 
ment that had been cut off in the shop, in squaring 
sheets of designs. He had a special written character 
which only he himself understood. He soon learned to 
distinguish the different styles and orders, and made 
drawings of Doric, Ionic and Corinthian capitals, which 
he used later in his buildings. He imagined Rome as 
it was in the times of the Emperors, and in thought 
restored all the temples to perfection. So enthusiastic 
was he over classic architecture that he intended to 
restore a more pure and simple grandeur to the art, 
which he thought had deteriorated in the hands of the 
Lombard and local building guilds. 

The two friends lived in lodgings, not caring much 
what they ate and drank, or how they dressed. It was 
quite enough to be free after setting jewels and working 
in gold all day, to go to the Forum and prowl about. 
Filippo soon found that he and Donatello had utterly 
diverse objects in study, and after a time they fell into 
a habit of going each his own way. Filippo was so 

* Baldinucci thinks it possible that Filippo worked with Lorenzo 
della Volpaia, a famous Florentine clockmaker then in Rome. 



ROMAN INFLUENCE 27 

earnest that he spent much money in hiring labourers to 
excavate where he especially wanted to study a ruin from 
its base. Sometimes he would himself dig and search 
about, so earnestly examining stones and fragments 
that the Romans dubbed them the treasure-seekers. 
" It is true," says Manetti, " that sometimes they found 
a silver or a gold coin, or an intaglio on cornelian or 
chalcedony, or a cameo," an assertion which Vasari 
magnifies into " an old earthen jar full of medals." 

There was one thing which very much puzzled 
Brunelleschi — ».e., the number of square holes in the 
large stones used by the ancients in building. Some 
archaeologists have thought these were for sustaining 
the marble facings, but the position of them is not 
always favourable to that purpose, Brunelleschi 
thought and thought again. At last he decided that 
these holes must have been for the better grip of an 
instrument for moving them. Not knowing what 
instrument the ancients used, he imagined one, and 
this gave him the idea of the ulivella — a species of 
grappling-iron, by which very large stones could be 
lifted by the crane without cords. It proved a most 
useftil machine to masons and others, and was greatly 
used by him in the Duomo. 

The different kinds of Roman masonry also furnished 
him with food for thought, and in studying these he 
realized the great help the dovetailing* of blocks of 
marble would be in sustaining a curved fabric such as 
an arch or dome. But most of all he gave his atten- 
tion to the way the Romans built their domes, for he 
knew how the projected dome of the Florence Cathedral 
* The Italians call this coda di rondine. 



28 BRUNELLESCHI 

was, on account of its immense size, occupying the minds 
of the masters of the Opera, and his ambition took the 
high flight of achieving this problem single-handed. 

And now he fell into his usual habits of secrecy. He 
did not even tell Donatello what he was doing, but let 
him go back alone to Florence, leaving him in Rome. 
Then he would betake himself to the Pantheon. How 
he managed I cannot say, but he got on the roof, and 
must have taken off some tiles to inspect the ribbing of 
the vault. He discovered the way in which the stones 
were so dovetailed one into the other as to be almost 
self-supporting, and it led him to imagine how a 
double dome might be built for the largest church ; he 
realized how cross-beams might help to gird the ribs 
together, and how a second dome within would 
\strengthen the whole. In fact, from the single-roofed 
IPantheon he evolved the double cupola of Florence. 
T^fter endless measurements and calculations the great 
idea of his life took form in his mind. Let Ghiberti 
make his doors and be famous, he would not begrudge 
it to him; but he, Brunelleschi, would teach all the 
masters how to make the very biggest dome in the 
world, and be famous in all generations. 



CHAPTER V 

ARTIST LIFE IN FLORENCE AND ROME 

After two or three years in Rome Filippo returned to 
Florence, and there, on July 2, 1404, he matriculated 
in the Arte degli Orefici, his studies in the gold-shops in 



FLORENCE AND ROME 29 

Rome having completed his qualifications. There 
exists some uncertainty about his life for the next ten 
years. Some authors say he returned to Rome and 
spent most of his time in studying ancient architecture 
there. Certain it is he began about this time to be 
known as an authority on the subject, for Manetti 
says : " Whenever Filippo let himself be seen in 
Florence, he was pressed into consultations about 
both private and public edifices.* Even before he 
went to Rome at all, his name is mentioned in con- 
nection with the Opera di Sta. Reparata. This was in 
November, 1404, five months after his matriculation as 
magister aurifex. The Latin document given entire in 
Guasti's " S. Maria del Fiore " (pp. 299, 300) is to this 
effect: "Those noble men (nobiles viri) the operai of 
the Opera of Santa Reparata, with the intention of ful- 
filling with due diligence all that pertains to their office 
regarding the construction and building of the said 
Church of Santa Reparata, with one consent and will 
elect and nominate as probi-viri — uc, members of a 
special council — the undersigned consuls of the Art of 
Wool, and the undermentioned * masters ' and citizens." 
Here follow four names of the consuls of the Artis 
Lanae, and nineteen special councillors chosen from the 
higher members of the Building Guild and the Gold- 
smiths' Company. 

Among the former were Bernardus Vanni Vecchietti, 
magister; Nanni Renzi, magister y a Lombard, etc.; and 
among the goldsmiths Bartolus, aurifex; his son 
Laurentius Bartoli (Ghiberti) ; and Filippus Ser 

* " Due vite incdite," etc., p. 314. 



30 BRUNELLESCHI 

Brunelleschi, aurifex. The caput magister, Giovanni 
d' Ambrogio, was present. 

The meeting was convened in loco residentie dictorum 
operariorum, and was called to judge whether an error 
had been made, or any improvement could be suggested, 
in the brackets and superstructure of the edifice which 
had been begun. This appears to have been the usual 
Lombard row of brackets to strengthen the wall at the 
top, and support the roof. 

It was decided to place the brackets (sproni) more 
prominently, and to build on them a gallery with a 
parapet. This perforated sculptured gallery is one of 
the great beauties of the Duomo, fringing the walls 
on the summit like lace-work. Between this and the 
arched gallery, which was begun round Brunelleschi's 
dome, lies all the difference between Lombard Gothic 
and Renaissance architecture, though only thirty years 
lies between them. Certain other resolutions as to the 
windows of the fagade were passed by this council, this 
part of the work being confided to four masters, always 
under the rule of Giovanni d' Ambrogio, the Lombard 
caput magister. It does not appear that Brunelleschi 
took any part in the argument, the principal speeches 
reported being by the masters themselves. He probably 
only gave his vote with the others. On February i6, 
1405, this council seems to have been either dissolved 
or diminished ; for, with the concurrence of the operate 
five of the councillors, among whom were Ghiberti and 
Brunelleschi,* were dismissed and removed firom office 
in the Opera of Santa Reparata. 

As no signs of Brunelleschi's presence remain in 
• Guasti, •• Santa Maria del Fiore," p. 302. 




^ 



X 
H 

O 

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Q 

§ 

PS 

H 
U 

PS 
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32 BRUNELLESCHI 

Florence for some years after this, it is probable that 
these were the years he passed in Rome, on his second 
visit there. 

' Vasari says he formed one of a meeting of the maestri 
(consuls of wool) and operai at the Opera del Duomo, 
which was held in 1407 to consider the means of build- 
ing the dome, when Filippo said it would be needful 
to abandon Arnolfo's plan and to raise the drum and 
form a better support for the dome ; but Manetti 
does not mention it, and the books of the Opera 
have no entry of it. Milanesi thinks the date was an 
error of Vasari, who wrote 1407 for 1417, when the 
aforesaid meeting was reported by all the authorities. 
After his first visit to Rome with Donatello, Filippo was 
certainly there again and alone, for there was scarcely 
a stone or building in the ruins of Rome which he did 
not draw or make a note of. 

It was on one of his visits to Florence — probably when 
he matriculated — that we get a characteristic picture of 
the life of the time. Doni, in his " I Marmi," shows us 
with graphic humour the Florentines of the fifteenth 
century sitting in groups on the seats round the Duomo 
in the cool of the evening, chatting in quaint and 
humorous style, after their work in the botteghe was 
finished. Here one evening sat Filippo Brunelleschi, 
with some other artists, and talked at sunset. 

Donatello, who had returned from Rome before his 
friend, was telling of the wonderful things he had seen 
on his way home, such as the marvellous Bible in marble 
which the Lombard and Sienese masters were sculptur- 
ing on the fagade of the cathedral at Orvieto. Then he 
spoke enthusiastically of a wonderftil classic sculpture 




2 

O 

N 
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45 

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FLORENCE AND ROME 33 

which he had seen at Cortona, where he rested on his 
way. It was a Roman sarcophagus which had been 
discovered buried in a field near the city, and repre- 
sented the battle of the Centaurs and Lapithae. Donato's 
raptures about the perfect modelling in this antique 
treasure so worked on Brunelleschi's love of classic art 
that he felt he must see it at all costs ; so, without saying 
a word to anyone, he set off just as he was in his hood 
and mantle, and his wooden shoes (zoccoli), and walked 
to Cortona, where he was so delighted with the sarco- 
phagus that he made a drawing of it with which he 
astonished Donatello on his return (Plate VIII.). Vasari 
speaks of his continuing his journey to Orvieto after 
this, but Manetti does not mention it. Probably the 
wooden slippers are a mere figure of speech, and he saw 
the work on his way back to Rome, 

Again in 1409 we hear of him in Florence, not in 
connection with art or architecture, but as the author 
of one of those portentous burle (practical jokes) which 
were so dear to the cinque-cento Florentine, The prank 
played on Grasso Legnaiolo (the fat carpenter) was quite 
as elaborate as the famous one perpetrated by Lorenzo 
dei Medici on Maestro Manente when he made him 
believe he was dead and had been to Inferno.* I should 
not quote the Grasso story here, were it not that, though 
the novellieri have for some centuries made it into legend, 
the facts are vouched for as true by the celebrated 
Padre Stradino, Giovanni Mazzuoli, by Filippo's con- 
temporary (Manetti), and by Manni, who has verified 
it by contemporary documents. It forms also a good 

* For an account of this see the second edition of ** Echoes of Old 
Florence," published by Flor and Findel, Florence. 
C 



34 BRUNELLESCHI 

personal picture of Brunelleschi the man among his 
friends. There was then a certain Manetto Ammanet- 
tini,* a very clever wood-carver, intarsia-worker and 
joiner, who had his boUega near the Baptistery. Of 
course everyone was mpre known by a nickname than 
by his own, and Manetti was always called il Grasso 
(the fat one). He was a stout, good-natured fellow, and, 
being of a simple nature, was rather a butt for jokes 
among his friends. One day Brunelleschi, being in a 
merry mood, planned with Donatdlo and others a huge 
burla for Grasso, and even got some of the officials of 
the Esecutore to help them. When Filippo was in 
Grasso's boUega one day a boy came and called Filippo 
home, saying his mother was ill. Away he went, but 
instead of going home he locked himself into the house 
of Grasso, whose mother was away in the country, and 
when the worthy carpenter came home, his own voice 
seemed to answer him from within. So cleverly did 
Filippo imitate his speech that the poor man was puzzled. 
He asserted himself; but the spurious Grasso within 
not only called him Matteo, and told him not to try 

* The Ammanettini in olden times had their houses on the Piazza 
del Duomo, but when they were pulled down in 1389 by reason of the 
building they moved to Via dei Macci, where their descendants lived 
till 1470. The family were all either painters or artists in wood. 
Manetto went to Hungary with Hppo Spano, and became so famous 
there as artist and architect that he was quite a familiar of the Emperor 
Sigismond, and the Republic of Florence appealed to him to use his 
interest to induce the Emperor to come to Italy. In 1427, before he 
went to Hungary, he had 1,790 florins in the Monte; by 1446 he 
had 3,820. — Preface to "Opere istoriche edite ed inedite di Antonio 
Manetti. Matematico ed architetto Fiorentino del Secolo XV. Raccolte 
per la prima volta e al suo vero autore restituite da Gaetano Milanese." 
Firenze, Le Monnier, 1887. 



FLORENCE AND ROME 35 

and take him in ; then he seemed to be telling his 
mother, who appeared to have returned, how, when 
he was in his shop, Filippo was called home to his 
mother's death-bed. 

" This," thought Grasso, " must be me inside, for no 
one else can know that." On hearing the mock Grasso 
scold his mother roundly for being away two days, and 
bid her make haste and prepare his supper in a voice 
which the real one could have declared his own, he was 
nearly fainting, and demanded : " Who, then, am I ?" 
As he went in a dazed manner down the street, Dona- 
tello came along, and said, " Oh, Matteo, do you want 
Grasso ? He went home some time ago." In despair 
he tottered forward and fell into the clutches of Brunel- 
leschi's accomplices, the officers of the Mercanzia (Board 
of Commerce), who promptly hailed him as Matteo and 
arrested him for debt. It was useless for him to swear 
he was not Matteo, for Matteo's own brothers, who were 
also in the jest, were called as witnesses, and declared 
he was their brother. The debt was proved from the 
books of the Mercanzia, and Grasso was clapped into 
the debtors' prison, where some other debtors treated 
him to supper. After which he got so confused that he 
could not decide whether he was Grasso or Matteo. 
When next morning even Messer Francesco Rucellai, 
who had been at the supper when Brunelleschi planned 
the joke, witnessed against him at the trial, calling him 
Matteo, he gave it up, and only puzzled himself by 
imagining, if he were Matteo, who the former Matteo 
should be now. The brothers of the real one, after a 
day or two, paid the debt, and poor Grasso was released, 
but in a state of the greatest perturbation of mind, 
c 2 



36 BRUNELLESCHI 

He did not know where to go home! At length he 
went to Matteo's house, where his supposed brothers fed 
him, and gave him strong wine, then put him to bed. 
In his sleep, Brunelleschi and his six friends carried 
him off in a zana (a large flat basket), and placed him 
with his head at the foot of the bed in his own room, 
his mother not yet having returned. 

He got so mercilessly laughed at by all Florence, and 
his mother was so irate at his simplicity, that his life 
became a burden to him ; and he decided to' go to 
Hungary with the Captain-General of the Hungarian 
forces, Filippo Scolari (Pippo Spano), for King Sigis- 
mondo had bidden Spano to bring him some good 
artists from Florence. This is the Pippo Spano for 
whom Brunelleschi in later years began the church 
of the Angeli which was never finished. 

But to return to our architect. He had not entirely 
given up sculpture since Ghiberti began his doors, but 
it was only with a half-hearted interest that he con- 
tinued to practise it in turn with his greater art — 
architecture. In 1415 Donatello and Brunelleschi had 
a commission for a figure to be carved in stone and 
covered with gilded lead — a peculiar style of art, cer- 
tainly, which was to stand on one of the brackets of the 
Duomo.* 

For some reason this work dragged out unfinished till 
1416, when the books of the Opera show that Filippo 

* Guasti, " S. Maria del Fiore," p. 316, An. 1415, Ottobre 9 : 
" Stantiaverunt . . . Donate Niccolai Betti Bardi et Filippo ser 
Brunelleschi intagliatoribus, pro parte solutionis ejusdam figure mar- 
moris vestite plumbi aureati, florenos decern auri, quam facere debent 
pro opera" (Delib. LXVIII. 36). 



FLORENCE AND ROME 37 

received 10 florins on account for it. This statue, in 
which Filippo evidently showed little interest, \yas the 
cause of some annoyance to him ; for on January 29, 
1415, he was threatened with imprisonment at the 
pleasure of the operai if he did not before February 5 
supply Donatello with lead sufficient to finish the figure.* 

This large figure was one of a series which were to 
have been placed on the pedestals above the smaller 
tribunes of the cathedral. Zocchi, in his illustrations 
of Florence, shows them already placed. It is not 
known where they are now, but certainly the pedestals 
are vacant. One of the statues was to have been 
made of the marble which Michael Angelo used after- 
wards for the David, but that one was, of course, never 
finished. 

This is almost the last work of sculpture with which 
Brunelleschi's name is connected. The only later one 
dates May 13, 1427, when we find him employed on 
another work of sculpture; but, as usual, he is only the 
designer, and Giusto di Francesco da Settignano is the 
stone-worker who executed it. Fabriczy (p. 23 note) 
quotes a quaint entry from the book of "Ricordi" of 
Fra Giuliano di Nofri Benini, Prior of the Church of 

• Guasti, **S. Maria del Fiore," p. 316, An. 1415, Gennaio 29: 
" Deliberaverunt quod precipiatur Pippo ser Brunelleschi pro eorum 
parte, quod hinc ad per totam diem quintam mensis februarii proxime 
futuri det et tradat Donato Betti Bardi plumbum pro proficiendo 
figuram in forma eis locatam ; alias elapso termino capiatur ad peti- 
tionem dictorum operariorum et sine ipsorum deliberatione non 
relapsetur" (Delib. LXIX. 34). Although the year is given as 1415, 
this is the January following the October of the commission. By the 
old Florentine computation the year began in March— a fact which 
accounts for a great deal of uncertainty in the chronology of Vasari 
and other early writers. 



38 BRUNELLESCHI 

S. Jacopo in Campo Corbolino: "This 20th day of 
November, 1426, I bought from the Opera of Santa 
Liberata (the Duomo) a slab of white marble weighing 
700 lb., for 24 soldi the hundred. In all it amounted 
to 8 lire 12 soldi 10 denari, and that I paid to the 
camarlingo. I bought the said slab on the advice of 
Filippo di Ser Brunellesco to make a tabernacle for the 
conservation of the Host in the Church of San Jacopo 
in the pilaster of the high altar, towards the altar of 
S. Bernardo." He further says that he took this to 
the works of San Lorenzo, where Brunelleschi was then 
employed, and placed it under cover; and that on 
Tuesday, May 13, Filippo comincib a fare lavorare on 
this marble, and that the Opera had chosen Giusto di 
Francesco da Settignano to sculpture it. 



CHAPTER VI 

FIRST THOUGHTS OF THE GREAT DOME 

On Studying the three great Italian biographers of 
Brunelleschi, I have come to the conclusion that Manetti 
is most to be trusted. Vasari drew his facts from him 
and embellished them in his own gossiping way, allow- 
ing his judgment to be influenced by his virus against 
the maestri who were the exponents of pre-Renaissance 
architecture, and his over-veneration of Brunelleschi as 
the founder of the classic revival. Consequently his 
reports of the meetings of maestri and operat are to be 
taken with caution. Baldinucci is more trustworthy. 



THE GREAT DOME 39 

for he repeats Manetti, leaving out Vasari's spite, and 
giving some valuable confirmation in his notes. Manetti's 
assertions are in almost every instance borne out by the 
archives of the Opera, lately collected and classed by 
Guasti, so I shall choose these two as the authorities on 
the part of Filippo's life which was connected with his 
masterpiece, the dome of Florence Cathedral — a period 
of twenty years. 

In 1417 Filippo made one of his periodical visits to 
Florence from Rome, and spent much of his time with 
the masters of the Opera. The fame of his architectural 
studies in Rome, and the designs, etc., which he had 
to show for them, had raised him in the estimation of 
the Florentine artists as a first-rate authority on archi- 
tecture, and the grand church being now completed as 
far as the tribune, the great problem of how to cover 
this huge space with a cupola was looming large before 
the architects. They all knew how to build a dome in 
the way the Lombard-Gothic artists had done before 
them ; but these were smaller affairs, for which they had 
been able to use the usual wooden scaffolding and 
centine, or curved planks of wood such as are used in 
making the arches of a bridge, and on which the dome 
was supported till the keystone was put in. Such a 
dome as this, which had to bridge over a diameter 
of 200 feet, had never in the annals of architecture been 
attempted, and the masters were aghast at the difficulties 
before them. 

We should here explain who these maestri were. 
They were the members of the Arte dei Maestri di 
Pietra e Legijame, who held sway in the Opera del 
Duomo. They entirely managed all the active part of 



40 BRUNELLESCHI 

the building going on in the city, under the patronage 

of the Arte della Lana, which with their officers, the 

operai, undertook the pecuniary administration, and as 

colleagues attended the general meetings.* It was 

I this arbitrary and powerful organization which Brunel- 

U leschi especially disliked. There was not enough indi- 

1 yiduality about it for him. He believed in a man 

1 having the credit of his own works, and did not choose 

' tkat his original designs should be obscured under the 

collective name of a company, as so much of the 

beautiful work in Florence had been. Moreover, he 

hated having every design discussed and altered by a 

dozen different opinions at a masonic meeting. 

However, the laborerium of the Opera was in itself 
such a congenial lounging-place that he frequented it 
greatly. There was always some interesting archi- 
tectural or sculptural work going on, and new models 
to see, and he had already gained such credit for his 
scientific knowledge that the masters often consulted 
him, as they did now about the dome. Now, Filippo 
had very clear ideas on one point — i.e., that he in- 
tended to build that cupola himself, and to get the 
honour of it, too. 

At this time, however, either his plans were not 
matured, or he. wanted to alarm the architects still 
* That the masters held private meetings which the operai and consuls 
of wool did not attend is very evident, from the fact that Brunelleschi 
was condemned to imprisonment for not paying his matriculation fees, 
in a private stance of the masters, of which the operai knew nothing. 
Several documents given by Gaye go to prove the filial relation of 
this civic guild to the Lombard one— fo^ instance, a decree that any 
Lombard or qualified masters from other parts who came to live in 
Florence should be allowed to work there without paying any fees or 
taxes to the city guild. 



THE GREAT DOME 41 

more, so that they should in the end resign the task ; 
in either case he deUghted in capping all their difficulties 
by finding greater ones. When they said the question 
was difficult, he agreed that it was almost impossible. 
Among other things, he said it would be necessary to 
change Arnolfo's plan, in which the cupola rose from 
the level of the nave, and to raise the octagon tribune 
28 feet above the nave, putting in an occhio (eye or 
circular window) in each face. But this the masters 
thought would weaken the supports still further, and 
the weight would certainly be too much for the 
tribune. 

Filippo, waiving further discussion, said that, his 
affairs being now in order, he must return to Rome. 
But this " they would not allow him to do, and consulted 
him morning and evening every day, and at length 
when he ultimately departed they forced him to take a 
handful of gold florins." This, says Manetti, may be 
found in the writings of the Opera among the expenses 
of May 26, 1417. Here it certainly is, but the real 
date is as follows : " An. 1417, a 19 maggio, Filippo di 
Ser Brunellesco, Aurifici, pro eius mercede et com- 
pensatione laboris per eum impensi in edificatione 
maioris Cupole, et pro bono gratuitate dicti laboris, 
flor, decem, auri.* This entry has been taken by some 
writers as a proof that he had submitted a plan to 
them at this date, but I believe this was not the case. 
Manetti speaks of it as an honorarium to him as an 
expert, while Vasari looks on it as a bribe to keep him 
in Florence. Possibly it was partly to pay for the 
plans of the elevation of the tribune which were carried 
* Guasti, "La Cupola," etc., p. 17, dcx:. 16. 



42 BRUNELLESCHI 

out, and so prepared the way for Brunelleschi's own 
share of future glory. 

But the Duomo was drawing him to his high destiny ; 
after this he seems not to have been able to keep away 
from it, and by this time his plans were well thought 
out. He came back from Rome again in 1418; the 
tribune was nearly finished, and he was again called 
into councils at the Opera. Again he enlarged on the 
immense difficulties to be surmounted, and advised the 
operai, both for their own honour and to avoid spending 
money uselessly, to call a collegio on a certain day, 
which all the master-architects, builders and master- 
engineers who were to be found in the realms of 
Christendom should be asked to attend, that they might 
discuss this crucial question in the presence of the 
most worthy citizens, of whom Florence now boasted 
more than at any past time. "It may be," added 
Filippo, " that God will bring some good out of it." 
Whether this suggestion were made in good faith, or 
whether Brunelleschi was quietly ridiculing the ponder- 
ous methods of the maestranze, as he called the Arte dei 
Maestri di Pietra e Legname, I cannot say. 

The council was certainly convened, but there is much 
confusion among the different writers as to its date and 
its discussion. Vasari puts it in 1420, and gives a great 
many absurd stories of the foolish propositions of the 
masters. This date is decidedly wrong. The books of 
the Opera chronicle a general council held in March of 
that year to examine various models, and among others 
that of Brunelleschi. This certainly cannot be the 
meeting at which absurd proposals were made ; for 
that must have been when first considering the ques- 



THE GREAT DOME 43 

tion, before any models were submitted. Besides, by 
April, 1419, Brunelleschi's model was already accepted. 
Manetti also mixed up the two meetings — one in 1417 
and one in 1419. The stormy one, when Filippo and the 
masters did not agree, and when he was bodily carried 
out of the room, was evidently the former, when he first 
broached his seemingly impossible plan of building the 
dome without armadure or centine (scaffolding and center- 
ing). Here is Manetti's account of the meeting. He 
says that Filippo came from Rome for it, and much 
consultation was held about scaffolding, girders, wood- 
work, iron and stone, gargoyles, and even ornamentation. 
Also whether the scaffolding should be pendent or built 
from the ground. After all this came the question of 
turning the dome. And again Filippo insisted on the 
possibility of building it without temporary supports, 
and undertook to do it ; only he said the cupola must 
be double, so that the two walls being bound together 
should support each other. 

Still the masters ridiculed the project. " If the dome 
has to be double," they asked, " how is the great weight 
to be supported over such a space, when even the model 
of the great master Arnolfo, which was in the Opera, 
had fallen in ?" One proposed to build a tower in the 
centre of the tribune to support the bridges and centine 
for the dome. 

Another thought it might be advisable to fill up the 
space with earth, and so make a solid mass to build 
upon. 

" Yes," said a humorous member, " and mix in some 
soldi J^^m^ with the earth, that the populace may be 
induced to take it away again." 






44 BRUNELLESCHI 

Brunelleschi asserted again and again that no such 
ponderous aids to architecture were necessary, that he 
would show them that the whole dome could be built 
without centering, and not fall at the end of it, either. 

A shout of derision greeted this ; but Filippo manfully 
stuck to his assertion, and argued so forcibly that they 
said he was obstructing the meeting, and he was carried 
out by force. For days after he was jeered at when he 
went into the streets, and people cried: "There goes 
that crack-brained fellow who says such preposterous 
things." Nevertheless his faith in himself inspired in 
others a belief in him, and the idea of building a dome 
without scaffoldings began to appear possible to some 
people. 

The operai were divided into two sects — the pro- 
Filippo and pro-Magistri. One of the former, Schiatta 
Ridolfi, wishing to build a family chapel in the Church 
of S. Jacopo in Borgo sopra V Arno, employed Brunel- 
leschi as his architect. The chapel was to have a cupola, 
and thus the architect had a chance to show on a small 
scale how to build one without centering.* It being a 
small dome, Filippo built it in the style still known in 
Italy as a cresta. Manetti and Baldinucci, who merely 
copied him verbally, describe the method as follows: 
" It was the first which was built in Florence in that 
form, which is still called a cresta or a vela, and it is 
done with a cane or pole attached horizontally to the 
centre of the base of the cupola (presumably by a pivot 
on the central plank of the bridge) ; this turns round 
little by little, its point touching every brick or half- 

* This work is now lost, having disappeared in the restoration of the 
church in 1709. Brunelleschi afterwards built another for the Barbadori 
family, in the Church of Sta. Felicity, with a similar dome. 



THE GREAT DOME 45 

brick which the mason lays, and the pole is thus gradually 
raised until, when the cupola is closed, it terminates in 
a perfectly perpendicular position." 

This simple and ingenious expedient insures a gradual 
and even closing in of space, and a perfectly safe gradus 
of curve ; but, after all, though it proves that a small 
circular dome may be made without centering, it does 
not quite explain the method to be used in the great 
octagonal cupola of the cathedral, and so thought many 
of the operai and consuls. 

" This is all very well," they said ; " but it is a very 
small cupola and comparatively easy. How are you 
going to build the immense one without scaffolding or 
centering ?" 

He always firmly asserted that he could do it, and 
at the next meeting the governors of the Opera begged 
him either to show the plans and models he had made 
or to explain more minutely his supposed method. But 
this Filippo was not at all inclined to do. He was 
quite aware of the mixture of jealousy and distrust of 
him as an outsider who claimed to rival the maestri on 
their own ground ; and, not wishing to share the credit 
of his invention with a crowd of other architects, he 
was determined not to divulge his secrets until the whole 
power of execution was put into his hands. This the 
masters of the Building Guild declined to do without 
having fully inspected his plans and designs in one of 
their usual meetings. They said they did not believe 
in supernatural powers without proof, and that a mere 
outsider could not have more knowledge than the 
masters of the Opera, who were all trained architects, 
and inheritors of the knowledge of ages. 



46 BRUNELLESCHI 

Then Filippo is said to have made his famous challenge 
(afterwards used by Columbus) of defying the masters 
with all their science to stand an egg upright on its 
smaller end. They all tried and failed. Filippo just 
flattened the end with a slight blow and stood it upright. 

" Oh, we could have done that !" cried the architects 
of the Opera. 

"And so you would say if you knew my plan of 
building a dome without centering. Let me build it, 
and you will see how it is done." 

The consuls of the Wool Company and the masters 
of the Opera were still obstinate, but, with a growing 
belief in the power of the dogged little genius, they 
determined to get his plans from him somehow. 

Consequently, on August 19, 1418, they put forth a 
proclamation that all architects, artists, or others who 
had made any plans or designs for the completion of the 
cupola should submit them to the Opera before the end 
of September. A prize of 200 gold florins was ofiered 
for the best design, and all the other competitors, whether 
their designs were accepted or not, would be refunded 
the expenses incurred in preparing their models. The 
masters, however, were backward, and on October 4 
another proclamation was made (for which the public 
herald, Francesco di Paolo, was paid 20 soldi on one 
day, and i lira for the next, which was the same sum), 
prolonging the time to October 22. 

Another prorogation to the end of December was 
then published. Several masters of the Opera sent in 
models either in wood or architectural designs on parch- 
ment, and there is a record of various sums of money 
paid for designs. 



THE GREAT DOME 47 

The first to really set to work was Brunelleschi, who 
gave notice of his intention as early as August 31, 1418, 
when the operai elected four masters to superintend and 
assist him in the work, which was a brick model begun 
on September i. 

We must now consider the question whether this 
model in masonry was the famous one in which Brunel- 
leschi was associated with Donatello and Nanni di Banco. 
I think it was, for the following reasons : Firstly, it is not 
likely that two large models in masonry would have 
been made by Brunelleschi in the same year, especially 
one on so large a scale that the Opera had to set four 
of its own masters to superintend the erection of it. 
Secondly, it would be quite in accordance with Filippo's 
character to wish that his erection should not be 
entirely in the hands of the hated maestranze, and that 
he should choose Donatello, his most intimate friend and 
his favourite pupil, to guard his interests. This seems 
proved by the entry in queer old low Latin in the books 
of the Opera, that Christoforo Simonis, Tuccio Johannis, 
Jacopo Johannis Roso, and Gherardo Belacqua, were 
paid 4 lire each between December 20 and 23, for their 
services as experts in inspecting the model of Filippo 
Brunelleschi and partners (Filippi Ser Brunellesco et 
sociorum), and to decide whether it would be possible 
to build the great dome on that plan. Here the 
names of Donatello and Nanni di Banco his associates 
are not precisely mentioned ; but in an entry dated 
December 29, 1419, we find that Filippo, Donatello, 
and Nanni were paid 45 gold florins for their work 
during the building of the brick and mortar model, 
made some time since, without any scaffolding, as an 



48 BRUNELLESCHI 

example for the great cupola. Thus we get documental 
proof that the three friends were associated in making 
a large brick model, and as only one design in masonry 
is mentioned, this was presumably the one (Guasti, 
" La Cupola," etc., p. 25, doc. 43. See doc. i). 

This trial edifice remained on the Piazza of the 
Duomo near the Campanile till January 23, 1430-1, when 
the consuls of the Opera, finding the real cupola so far 
advanced that it was of no further use, and also that 
complaints were made of its being so misused as to 
become a public nuisance, instructed the caput magister 
of the Opera to order its removal, " taking care, how- 
ever, that the framework shall be preserved entire, and 
placed in a safe and more convenient place " (Guasti, 
p. 35> doc. 68).* 

Brunelleschi was still receiving payments for this 
model up to 1420. On July 11, 1419, he was paid 
50 lire 15 soldi for expenses and work on the lantern 
and gallery of the model cupola, which had on the 
top a gilded banner with a lily (Guasti, " La Cupola," 
etc., 19, doc. 20). On April i, 1420, he was paid 
2 lire 8 denari for wire and cord to measure the model, 
and on April 24, 10 florins for his time and labour during 
the making of it by four masters of the city, and for 
having attended councils and given advice about this 
model "from November 20, 1419, to this day" {i.e., 
April 24). 

Guasti gives a long list of expenses paid during all 
this time to different masters and tradesmen who were 

* In another book the decision is thus chronicled: "An. 1431, 
a 4 Febbraio. Deliberaverunt quod caput magister Opere destrui 
faciat, expensis Opere, modellum factum per Filippum ser Brunelleschi 
magne Cupole" (Libro di Deliberazioni, I, a.c, 153 t.). 



THE GREAT DOME 49 

connected with the model, ending on April 26, 1420, 
with 46 soldi 8 denari paid for three flasks of white 
wine and two of vermiglio, with bread, pomegranates 
and beans, for the collation of the masters who went to 
inspect it on the morning of that day. 

From various entries in the books of the Opera we 
gather that a breakfast to the masters was a usual 
ceremony on the commencement and completion of a 
work. The important model being finished, and all the 
others ready, a great meeting was called at the Opera 
to consider them. Vasari puts this at the end of March, 
1420. But the books of the Opera show that the public 
herald announced to the Florentine citizens on April 3, 
1420, that anyone who had anything to say regarding 
the models should attend, etc. (Guasti, p. 26, doc. 45). 

The attendance included all the Florentine masters 
who had sent in models, but there is no special mention 
of the Ultramontane ones, whom Vasari declares 
attended in great numbers, except, of course, the 
Lombard headmaster Giovanni d' Ambrogio and 
several other North Italian masters then working with 
the Florentines. 

The affair was so emphatically a civic one that the 
Florentine guild, being a very large one, could quite 
well settle it unaided. In the first place, before the 
Opera could seriously consider his model, Filippo was 
obliged to lay a description and technical explanation of 
it before the meeting. This he did at length, and the 
original of the report, which I here give in English, was 
copied into the books of the Opera in 1420.* 

* Vasari has considerably embroidered this concise and explicit 
explanation, but I have preferred to take the language of the copy 
D 



50 BRUNELLESCHI 

" Instructions given in 1420 by Brunelleschi 
FOR THE Construction of the Cupola, 

ACCORDING TO HIS MODEL, WITH THE AMEND- 
MENT MADE IN I42I. 

" We will here mention every part which is contained 
in the model, made as a sample of the great cupola, 
which cupola must be built in this form and manner. 

" Firstly, the angles of the wall of the inner cupola 
shall at the base be 6 feet 10 inches thick. They are 
built pyramidically, so that at the top, where the orifice 
for the lantern is, they are only 4 feet 7 inches thick. 

"We shall make a second cupola outside this to 
preserve it from damp, and also to increase its size and 
magnificence. The masonry of this at the base will be 

2 feet 3 J inches thick, following it up pyramidically; 
the thickness will at the summit be i foot 2 inches. 

" The space which remains between one cupola and the 
other shall be 3 feet 8 inches. In this space stairs will 
be placed so that one may pass freely an5^where between 
the two domes. At the top this space will be 4 feet 

3 inches wide. 

" There are also (between the domes) twenty-four 
sproni,* of which eight are in the angles, and sixteen in 
the sides (two in each). Each buttress shall at the 

which the anonymous contemporary gives from the books of the 
Opera (Moreni, "Due Vite de Brunelleschi/* pp. 321-323; see also 
Guasti, *' La Cupola," etc., pp. 28-30, doc. 51). 

* Sproni are either brackets or buttresses, or any transverse masonry 
for the purpose of strengthening a wall or foundation. In this case 
they are solid buttresses, built between the walls of the two cupolas to 
strengthen them, and counteract the pressure from above as the work 
goes on. 



THE GREAT DOME 51 

angles be 12 feet 10 inches wide. On the inside between 
the angles there will be two buttresses in each division, 
each one 7 feet 4 inches wide at the foot, and running 
the whole height of the dome, being pyramidically built, 
with it, in equal proportions to the summit. 

" These twenty-four buttresses, with the said cupola, 
are bound around by six circles of strong macigno (a 
kind of limestone found near Florence), well riveted 
together with iron ; and above these stone girders are 
other girders of iron, which hold together the cupola 
and the buttresses. There must be solid masonry at 
the base to the height of 9 feet 7 J inches, after which 
the buttresses will follow, dividing the two domes. 

" The first and second circles are 8 feet 8 inches high, 
the third and fourth 2 feet 5J inches, and the fifth and 
sixth I foot 10 inches; but the first circle at the base 
shall be besides this strengthened with long transverse 
blocks of stone, so that both the inner and outer domes 
rest on these blocks. 

" At the height of 22 feet or thereabouts of the said 
domes there will be small round arches forming a 
passage between one buttress and another, and under 
the arches, between one buttress and the next, will be 
girders of solid oak which steady the buttresses and 
bind the dome ; above these oaken girders must be a 
circle of strong iron ones. 

" The buttresses must be all built of strong tnacigno, 
or limestone, and the eight sides of the cupola of solid 
stone, strengthened with buttresses to the height of 
44 feet, and from here upwards they may be of bricks, or 
oispugna (a light spongy stone like pumice-stone), which- 
ever the builders choose, as being lighter than stone. 
D 2 



52 BRUNELLESCHI 

" There will be an outer gallery above the windows 
(of the drum), which will rest on brackets, and have 
a perforated parapet about 3 feet 8 inches high to 
embellish the tribune beneath, or there might be two 
galleries, one above the other, over an ornate cornice, 
the upper gallery being open. 

" The water from the cupola will be drained off in a 
channel of marble 7 inches wide, and carried away in 
pipes in the wall beneath it. 

" Eight marble ribs will be constructed at the angles 
of the outer cupola. The blocks of marble shall project 
I foot 10 inches above the tiles in the form of a cornice, 
and shall be 3 feet 8 inches wide. These ribs are carried 
in pyramidal form from the base to the summit. 

" In this way the cupola may be built without any 
scaffolding, especially up to the height of 55 feet ; but 
from that point upwards the masters who build it will 
decide on the best way, because in building ' practice 
is the best teacher.' " 

An amendment was made on March 13, 142 1 (the 
year after), that the sixteen buttresses on the sides should 
be 5 feet 6 inches wide at the base instead of 7 feet 
4 inches, so as to lessen the weight of the fabric, and 
that the cupola, instead of being built of heavy stone to 
the height of 44 feet, shall be so built up to about 
25 feet, and after that of bricks.* 

By this explanation, together with the brick model 
which was now open to inspection, Filippo at length 
succeeded in impressing the consuls and masters with 

• "Archives of S. Maria del Fiore " (Bastardello di Deliberazioni 
LXXXI. a.c. 17 t.). 




ECTioN OP THE CupoLA. — A. The Tound windows of the drum. b. The part 

where the solid walls divide into the inner and outer cupola, leaving a 
k passage between them. c. The doors opening to the different staircases. 

D. The ending of the first stage of staircase, and entrance to second corridor. 
I F. The third corridor and staircase, h. The door of this passage, e. Aper- 
i tures leading to the openings marked i, which were left for the scafifolding 

for the mosaic. (The mosaic was never placed. Frescoes took its place 
\ later.) g. Stair to the lantern n. k. Door of internal gallery, l. The 

arches that sustain the outer "cupola, q r. The plane where the oaken 

chain of girders is placed. 



54 BRUNELLESCHI 

a sense of his power. Certainly none of the other 
models were at all equal to it, and, moreover, they all 
required a deal of scaffolding, and the indispensable 
centering of wood — an enormous difficulty and expense 
in itself. But there remained the fact that he was a 
goldsmith, and not qualified in the Arte dei Maestri di 
Pietra e Legname, and to give the crowning glory of 
the great church which that guild had exclusively built 
went against the masters' principles. 

The Florentine world outside the lodge was also 
divided into two factions. 

One party believed in Filippo, who lost no opportunity, 
either in meetings or social gatherings, of declaring that 
he and no other man could succeed in putting the dome 
to the great church; and that if that pig-headed 
maestranza only had the sense to trust him, they would 
find failure was impossible to him, so certain was he of 
his plans. 

Another party was full of admiration for Lorenzo 
Ghiberti, whose first doors of the baptistery were near- 
ing completion and attracting general approbation. 
They held that he, having defeated Brunelleschi in 
sculpture, must needs be a better artist ; moreover, his 
model for the Duomo was by these partisans judged a 
very fine one, and, indeed, stood next to Filippo's in 
rank. Lorenzo's partisans made a secret crusade 
against Brunelleschi, and tried in every possible way to 
get the commission for Lorenzo.* 

Arguments fierce and frequent took place in every 
part of the city. Artists quarrelled in the studios, rich 

* Lorenzo Ghiberti had been -worldly wise enough to conciliate the 
masonic mastery by matriculating in their guild. 



THE GREAT DOME 55 

citizens discussed the question in the loggie and salons, 
the consuls of wool made speeches at meetings, and the 
masters protested in the Opera. At length the operai 
decided that something must be done, but, as no unani- 
mous vote for Brunelleschi as sole architect could be 
obtained at any meeting, they resorted to a compromise, 
and tried to please all three parties, besides insuring 
themselves against risk of failure. To avoid the latter, 
they gave Brunelleschi a temporary commission to begin 
the work up to 14 braccia only (27 feet). It would then 
be inspected by a council of operai and maestri^ and, if 
found satisfactory, full powers of completion would be 
given him. Hedging between the parties, these wily 
operai^ moreover, said that it would not do to put the 
whole of such a great work into the hands of one un- 
tried artist ; therefore they would associate with him 
Lorenzo Ghiberti as provvisores at 3 florins a month 
each, and both would be under the capo maestro of the 
Opera. 

This was Battista Antonio, who had been elected in 
1418, when Giovanni d' Ambrogio resigned from old age. 
Being capo maestro of the whole Opera, he of course re- 
tained his oflice during the building of the dome. So the 
esprit de corps of the masters was salved, one of them- 
selves was still nominal head, and Ghiberti's friends were 
also satisfied. Not so, however, Brunelleschi, who was 
furious, and half inclined to throw up the whole thing. 
Was there ever such an absurd commission given to a 
man as to build a mere rim of a cupola 27 feet high, 
and then leave it to chance whether it ever got finished 
or not ? The very offer was an insult to an architect 
who had any respect for himself. But the worst sting 



i 



56 BRUNELLESCHI 

was the foisting of Ghiberti on him. He had sixteen 
years ago given way, and left Ghiberti to enjoy his own 
laurels in the field of sculpture, determining to have no 
rival in that of architecture, to which he had given so 
many years of deep and earnest study in Rome. To be 
obliged, then, either to share his well-earned laurels 
with his old rival, or to have them ruined by his 
ignorance, was too much mortification. 

Filippo protested, he swore, he demonstrated that he, 
and he alone, had made the plans, and that he only 
could carry them out. That if his model were the one 
accepted, as it was jn fact, the model of Ghiberti, how- 
ever good, could be of no use, and that therefore he 
was not required. 

It was all in vain. No one would trust one man 
alone when for ages the guild had been accustomed to 
a plurality of masters taking counsel and working in 
concert, and poor Filippo must either resign the great 
aim of his life, or begin it under what he felt to be great 
indignities. Resign he would not; his heart and his 
ambition were both too much involved. He was deter- 
mined not only to build the cupola, but to have the 
credit for it. So, trusting to future opportunity to get 
rid of Ghiberti, he decided to put up with the draw- 
backs and win his way to glory in spite of them. 

Ghiberti himself had no scruple in accepting the 
position. Cicognara (vol. ii., cap. iv., p. 82), quoting 
from Ghiberti's codex in the Magliabecchian Library, 
gives his own words, saying that in the building of the 
tribune he and Filippo were fellow- workers for eighteen 
years at the same salary, till they had finished the 
tribune. 



THE GREAT DOME 57 

It would seem, however, that the consuls of the 
Opera so far gave in to him as to cancel that humiliating 
plan of only trusting him to begin to a certain height, 
for the document (No. 71 in Guasti, " La Cupola," 
PP« 35j 36) which chronicles the election of the three 
as /rovmor^s, specifies distinctly that they shall "con- 
struct, provide, and order, or cause to construct," the 
said cupola to its perfecting and completion (ad ipsius 
cupola perfectionem et complementum). 

They were each to have a salary of three gold florins to 
a month, which was to be paid at the pleasure of thefi 
Opera, and if the work satisfied them. Battista d' 
Antonio was at present drawing 2 gold florins a month 
as his usual honorarium as capo magistro. This 2 florins 
would be withdrawn when the higher pay as one of the 
provvisores began. But, then, he had other privileges. 
He was to be paid the usual 20 soldi a day due to any 
master of the guild whenever he chose to give his manual 
labour to the building. We can see from this that 
Battista was favoured, and the reason was not far to 
seek. He was the head of the lodge, and the others, or 
at least one of them, were outsiders. 

He appears to have been a reasonable man, and did 
not intrude his oflicial power on Brunelleschi. I find 
no case of friction between them. Filippo bowed to 
necessity in accepting him as nominally representing 
the guild, which hitherto had monopolized all archi- 
tectural works ; and he, according to tradition, left any 
one of his colleagues who had a commission to carry it 
out unhindered, unless a meeting were considered neces- 
sary to discuss his methods of executing it. No ! it was 
not the capo maestro that troubled Brunelleschi : it was 



58 BRUNELLESCHI 

that other goldsmith who, not content with being the 
finest sculptor in Florence, must needs be bracketed 
with one who knew himself to be the finest architect. 
The document of election further stipulates that if 
either of these three provvisores resigned, or should be 
dismissed, Giuliano Arrighi (the painter Pesello) or 
Johannes Gherardi of Prato should be elected in his 
place. 

Besides this, eight master builders — Riccio di Giovanni, 
Tuccio Giovanni of Siena, Giovanni di Filippo, Niccolo 
di Benozzi, Berti di Bartolommeo, Geri di Antonio 
Giofi, Blasius, and Gherardo — were told off for the 
building. All these were to receive the usual salary of 
20 soldi or a lira a day, and were bound to be under the 
orders of the provvisores. On May 20 preparations for 
the work began, and on October 22 both Filippo and 
Ghiberti were paid 13 gold florins for four months and 
ten days (from May 20 to September 30) at 3 florins 
a motith.* 

All the biographers exclaim at the meanness of the 
remuneration. Manetti blames Lorenzo's friends for 
splitting up a salary which ought to have been all 
Filippo's, and giving half to a man who was practically 
superfluous. 

AH this busy summer, and the next three or four 
years, the progress of the dome may be traced by the 
entries in the books of the Opera. On April 30, 1420, 
immediately after the election of the three provvisores^ 
we find the administration of the Opera gave an 
order to prepare 120 braccia of stone, cut brick- 
shape, 200 planks of olive-wood, 100 fir -trunks for 

• See documents 72 and 73, p. 37, in Guastl's " La Cupola," etc. 



THE DOME RISES 59 

making platforms, 8 planks of pine-wood, while five 
modia* of lime and 60 blocks of tnacigno (hard stone), 
2 braccia square, were to be supplied every day except 
when it rained. It was further ordered that a wheel 
should be erected to drag them up to the laborerium. 
Cut stone and marble were, as time went on, brought in 
such quantities that the Piazza of the Duomo was full 
of them, and the citizens said they " thought Pippo was 
going to b lild a city up there, and that Maestro Arnolfo's 
church would be crushed under it." 



CHAPTER VII 

THE DOME RISES 

With all these preparations, the absolute building does 
not appear to have been begun till August 7, when 
3 lire 9 soldi were spent on a barrel of vermiglio and 
a flask of trebbiano wine, bread, and melons for the 
collation of the masters on the morning when they 
began the masonry of the cupola (Guasti, op. cit, p. 85, 
doc. 239). 

These precious books of the Opera reveal where and 
how the marble and stones were obtained, and how 
they were all carried up to the top of the dome. The 
Opera had taken a lease of the quarry of Trassinaia on 
the hill of Vincigliata, and Antonio di Berto and Fran- 
cesco d' Andrea were employed to bring the blocks of 
macigno to the Opera, 100 lire being lent them for pre- 

* The Roman modius was a measure containing about two gallons. 



6o BRUNELLESCHI 

liminary expenses. We find, moreover, that 223 scarpelli 
(chisels) were sharpened on June 28 to cut the blocks. 

On April 18, 1421, the council deliberated that the 
macigno from that quarry, being good for the purpose, 
should be used exclusively for the cupola, and not for 
any other building. On January 30, 1424, a Carrara 
carman, named Leonardo di Berto, had a commission 
to bring twenty-five cartloads, of 2,000 pounds each, 
of white marble from Avenza to Pisa, whence it was 
to be brought to Florence by river ; the whole to be 
delivered before March, 1425. Leonardo was to be 
prepaid 12 florins on account, that he might hire the 
requisite number of workmen. This was probably the 
material for the ribs, which were made of blocks of 
white marble shaped to form a rich raised moulding 
60 inches wide. 

This was not enough, however, for on June 22, 1433, 
Filippo Brunelleschi and Battista and Bartolommeo 
Ciai iprovveditores) had the faculty to order 100 migliaia 
(literally, thousands) of marble from Checco di Mar- 
chisse, 250 migliaia from Francesco d' Andrea and 
Francesco di Meo, and 250 from Bertino di Piero of 
j \ Vernagallo and his sons. All of which was to be in 
1 1 the manner and form given them by Filippo and Bat- 
tista, capo maestro, and must be delivered by the end of 
October, 1433 ; 7 lire 10 soldi a migliaia was to be paid 
for carriage if it came by water, and 2 lire 6 soldi more 
if, not being able to bring it by water, it had to come 
overland. On August 12 the caput magister, Battista 
d' Antonio, was permitted to order sixty cut blocks of 
macigno, and on March 16, 1427, some masters and men 
were sent to the quarries to cut the stones required for 



THE DOME RISES 6i 

the anulos lapidum — t.e., the circle of stone girders for 
the cupola. 

All these heavy stones had to be raised to the top of 
the dome by means of lifts and cranes. The first mention 
is that of the wheel spoken of on p. 59. This wheel 
seems to have been replaced in 1421 by a new invention 
of Brunelleschi's — a machine lift, which proved of such 
superior utility and convenience that the Opera on 
July 18 gave him 100 florins for his ingenuity.* On 
August 20, 1421, he received in addition 11 florins and 
584 lire for the expenses he had incurred in constructing 
this lift. A long detailed list of these costs is given 
in Guasti (doc. 125). They include wheels, pulleys, 
beams, balances, rope, leather, yokes for the oxen that 
worked it, fourteen pails of glue, boxes, chains, etc. 
In 1423 he again improved on this by a castello to draw 
up weights, for which invention he was paid 10 gold 
florins on April 15, 1423. 

These machine cranes form a prominent subject in 
the ** Book of Deliberations " and the book of payments 
of the Opera between 1420 and 1430. Various masters 
invented models of machines for drawing materials up 
to the workmen in the dome ; but the first one adopted 
was certainly the one just mentioned, invented by 
Filippo himself. 

On October 6, 1422, a blacksmith was paid 252 lire 
for chains and ironwork necessary for the machine, 
while wood and new rope seem to have been in frequent 
requisition. Then, on March 27, 1425, we find expenses 
for a new lift invented by Filippo di Ser Brunellesco 
and Batista d' Antonio, caput magister. Both Donatello 
* Guasti, doc. 122-124. 



62 BRUNELLESCHI 

and Ghiberti were employed on this improved lift. On 
October 12, 1425, Donatello was paid 4 lire 4 soldi for a 
mozetto (sic) — (probably morzetto, or screw- vice), 29 pounds 
in weight, for the lift, for which he had used i pound 
3 ounces of his own bronze ; and on the same day Ghiberti 
was paid 34 lire 18 soldi 4 denari for 5 mozetti of bronze, 
which weighed 280 pounds. Of this, 120 pounds of 
bronze metal belonged to the Opera; the rest he ftirnished 
at his own expense. By this we see that Ghiberti was 
paid by the piece for any work he did in addition to 
his salary as provvisore. In 1427, on December 9, the 
Opera " deliberated " that the capo maestro might sell 
the large wheel and beam for the price which he shall 
judge fair. This was probably Brunelleschi's first lift. 
For the new one, expenses continue to be noted up to 
1433, when Antonio Manetti was paid 12 lire for two 
screws for it. 

The office of tiratore (drawer up of weights) was a 
recognised business. The first tiratore, Bartolino di 
Bartolommeo Cagnani, was paid 31 soldi a day, when 
he worked with one ox, and 50 when two were em- 
ployed. On November 29 we find that Fieri di Nanni, 
of MarignoUe (a village near Florence) undertook to 
convey to the upper wall of the cupola any kind of 
stone, etc., bricks, lime, sand, water, iron, or wood, etc., 
either by horse or ox power, using the lift designed by 
Filippo Brunelleschi. He was engaged for a year, 
beginning on December i, and was paid 10 denari in 
winter, and 6 in summer for every, load. 

In March, 1422, a new contract was made with a 
certain Francesco, nicknamed Baccellone, who was to 
be paid according to the subbio (beam ?) he used. Subbio 



THE DOME RISES 63 

is the large beam of the weaving loom; it might be used 
here as the pole of the lever. For using the great subbio 
he got 7 denari a load, for the middle-sized one loj^, 
for the small one 14. In 1425 a certain Nanni di Goro 
having worked at the lift for a year with his oxen and 
sent up a great number of weights, the operai decided 
to raise his salary to 42 soldi a day. 

On September 5, 1426, Filippo Brunelleschi was paid 
6 lire as compensation. He had, it seems, bought a 
pony for the lift, and then, having resold it, he lost a 
florin by it.* 

In 1421, when the marbles were being brought at 
great expense from Pisa, Brunelleschi invented a kind 
of boat or raft which he called the badalane. It was 
furnished with machines, probably cranes, so that 
heavy weights might be brought to Florence at much 
less labour and expense than before. According to his 
usual principle, he was determined that he himself, and 
no other, should reap the fruits of his ingenuity, and 
he obtained from the Signoria a privilegio, which is, I 
believe, the prototype of the modern patent. This 
document, which is preserved in the registers of the 
republic, is given entire in Gaye's " Carteggio," vol. i., 
pp. 547, 548. It is dated June 19, 1421, and begins, 
" Audito magnifici et potentes domini, domini priores et 
vexillifer justitie, qualiter vir perspicacissimi intellectus 
et industriae et inventionis admirabilis Filippus Ser 
Brunelleschi," etc., and stipulates that for three years to 
come no one shall, either in the Arno or any other river, 
lake, or water whatsoever, use this boat or make any other 
similar one, without the consent of Filippo Brunelleschi, 
* AH these entries are in Guasti, pp. 62-67. 



64 BRUNELLESCHI 

who during this time is to receive the whole profit of 
his invention.* 

On November 6, 1422, the masters drank a barrel of 
wine to celebrate the day when they commenced to 
build with the quadronibus (bricks). Brunelleschi caused 
the bricks for this part to be made especially to measure. 
Some of them were of a peculiar shape for dovetailing 
one into another to make the masonry more solid at the 
angles. The mould is still preserved in the museum 
of the Opera. 

The work went on till July, 1423, when the circle 
had reached the height of 44 feet, and the question of 
the chain of girders {la catena) had to be considered. 
On July 5t Filippo was paid 8 lire for a model in wood 
of these girders, which were immense wooden beams 
run through the buttresses and the arches between 
them. The beams were bound with iron at the juncture 
where the slight curve was needful. The iron work 
for the wooden girders was all ordered from certain iron 
masters of Pistoja — a city which from the earliest 
times had been famous for metal work. 

The capo maestro Battista does not seem to have at all 
interfered with Brunelleschi's plans, but did not mind 
assisting in other ways. Thus, on November 21, 1421, 
he hired a pony, and with a companion rode to Pistoja 
to find and purchase the wood for the catena. This 
little journey cost the Opera 4 lire 3 soldi. Nuto di 

• Milanesi, in his chronological table to Brunelleschi's life, dates 
the invention of the badalone, to bring marbles from Pisa to the Duomo 
of Florence, in December, 1432. Whether this be a mistake, or whether 
Brunelleschi improved on his earlier invention in that year, I cannot 
say. 

t Guasti, op. dt., p. 70, doc. 175. 



THE DOME RISES 65 

Giovanni da Vergli, the man who brought the beams to 
Florence, was not paid for them till August 28, 1422, 
when he received 16 gold florins for the twenty-four 
beams, and another 12 florins on September 2, 1423. 

Two other models had been made before this. Jacopo 
di Niccol6 received 8 soldi, a much lower price, for his 
model on June 5, 1421. 

We find that Brunelleschi was not able to work 
independently of the company of masters in any par- 
ticular. They went on in their usual way, and had their 
meetings to judge the masonry, and festive collations at 
every step of his progress. On a Sunday in August they 
had a breakfast when they went to examine his model 
of the catena. This great girder was safely placed by 
August 27, 1423, when Filippo was paid 100 gold florins 
as honorarium for his services to the Opera, in "invent- 
ing and placing the girders on the large cupola," and 
also for other works, such as finding a means of lighting 
the cupola, and deciding how the next circle of stone 
girders was to be placed ; also for designing the ribs of 
white marble. In this document (Guasti, op, cit., p. 71, 
doc. 177) he is styled " Filippo Ser Brunelleschi inven- 
tore et ghubernatori maiori Cupola." 

This catena, which took two years to place, was in 
Brunelleschi's eyes of the greatest importance, yet 
when the senator and architect, Giovanni Battista Nelli 
made his survey in 1753, he wrote a book to prove that 
the girders were needless, and had no effect on the 
safety of the dome. This may well be the case now 
that it is complete, and the closing in and superposed 
weight of the lantern keeps it solid, but during the 
course of building they might well have been useful 

£ 



66 BRUNELLESCHI 

in counteracting the tendency of the walls to fall towards 
the centre, though, owing to the very gradual curve, 
this tendency was no doubt minimized. 

On September 24, 1423, we again find money spent 
" per fare honore di vino a maestri " when they came to 
examine the designs of Messer Giovanni di Prato and 
Filippo di Ser Brunellesco. Another entry proves that 
these were designs for the smaller stone girders which, 
being placed transversely under the upper row of arches, 
bound the outer and inner domes together. 

So the work went on for two years, the walls rising 
steadily and safely up to the point where the inward 
curve commenced. Here began the difficulties. The 
masters and workmen employed began to be terrified 
at the perilous work of building at such a giddy height 
without their accustomed solid supports of scaffolding 
and centering. The centering would at least have 
formed a screen on the interior, and have hidden that 
awful abyss of the tribune. They all agreed that, 
though Brunelleschi might raise the cupola without 
centering, he must and should put up some bridge- 
work which would give them a platform to repose 
their giddy heads at meal-times. Brunelleschi agreed 
to this, and in time the platform bridged the 
inner space, forming a certain pied a terre for the 
workmen. 

Two great questions were pressing just then; the 
design for this scaffi^lding was one of them. The second 
crucial point was the method of building in the cross- 
girders of macigno (limestone), which formed the second 
catena. Filippo had made his plans for these transverse 
beams, and the masonry required to fix them; the 



THE DOME RISES 67 

scaffolding was already designed by him, but he thought 1/ 
it a good opportunity to show the operai that his col- 
league Ghiberti was a useless expense to them, and of 
no practical use in the work. 

We have seen by his practical joke on Grasso the 
carpenter how clever Filippo was at simulation, and 
now he decided to use that talent to expose Ghiberti, 
and to remain triumphant as sole architect of the cupola. 
He first sounded Ghiberti as to his idea of the girders ; 
but Ghiberti, whose mind was filled with sculpture, had 
no ideas to propound, so he said that, as Filippo was 
the inventor of the work, he would leave the question 
to him. FiHppo pretended that he had no ideas either, 
and the masters and their men up on the walls were 
waiting for orders, having very little to do till this ques- 
tion was settled. One day Filippo, who was always the 
first on the scene of labour, and kept his eye on every 
stone that was laid, was missing. A master-builder 
went to his house, and found him in bed with, as he 
said, a bad pain in his side, and the household were 
all busy about the invalid, one heating flannels, another 
making poultices at the fire. 

Groaning, he referred his underlings to Ghiberti. 
But he was not of much use. If Filippo had made 
plans for the girders, Ghiberti had not seen them, and 
he had no designs of his own. He was, poor man ! on 
the horns of a dilemma. If he went to Filippo for 
instructions, he acknowledged his own inability to direct 
the work which he was paid for directing. If by chance 
Filippo had made his designs, and Ghiberti's method 
was inferior to them, then he might have the mortifica- 
tion of being put to shame before the whole Opera and 
E 2 



68 BRUNELLESCHI 

maeslranze. So he temporized, and said Brunelleschi 
would soon be well enough to give his orders himself. 
However, the pseudo-invalid grew worse every day. 
When the builders came for orders, they were told that 
Ghiberti would give them, but he gave none. When 
the operai begged him to give Ghiberti instructions, for 
he, Filippo, having the plans, Lorenzo could not do 
without him, he replied meaningly, *' But I could do 
excellently well without Lorenzo." 

Meanwhile the works were at a standstill till the 
Opera took the matter in hand and desired Lorenzo 
to immediately proceed with the girders. Lorenzo's 
partisans did not hesitate to say that Brunelleschi 
was only feigning illness because he was afraid of 
failure in carrying out a work for which he had no 
capacity. This soon brought him limping on the 
scene, walking as if in pain, and he had an interview 
with Ghiberti, in which he said that he, being ill, 
could not do everything himself, and that, as Ghiberti 
shared the pay, he should also share the work ; so he 
gave him his choice of the two things — would he 
superintend the setting of the stone girders, or would 
he design and erect the scaffolding and platform ? 
Lorenzo chose the girders, hoping that some old method 
used by the masters in former buildings would give 
him an idea. Brunelleschi soon had his massive maze 
of scaffold bridgework erected, and Ghiberti began his 
catena. The building went on for some time, till Filippo 
began to say that Lorenzo's girders were not worth the 
expense of 36 florins a year which the Opera paid 
Lorenzo, and that they were of no practical use in 
sustaining the inward-curving dome. At the next 



THE DOME RISES 69 

meeting of the Opera he brought out his own plan and 
demonstrated to everyone's satisfaction how superior a 
strengthening force his method had. 

The affair had the results he hoped for. On June 28, 
1425, the Book of Deliberations of the Opera has this 
significant entry : " Deliberated that Lorenzo Barto- 
lucci, goldsmith, cannot have or hold from the above 
Opera any salary for his work and office from the 
1st of July forward, notwithstanding the election of the 
said Lorenzo, nor anything the consuls, operai, and four 
officials of the cupola may say to the contrary.'* (See 
document No. 2.) 

This is the best confirmation we can have of his 
dismissal from the Opera at the very time when Brunel- 
leschi proved his being superfluous. He was not got 
rid of, however, for on March i, 1425-6, here is Ghiberti 
again receiving a salary. Brunelleschi as inventore and 
provveditorey however, had an increase up to 100 florins 
a year, while Ghiberti received only the former 3 florins 
a month for his sinecure. Even this appears not to 
have been paid in the years 1430 and 1431, and after 
June, 1436, it ceased entirely. This does not imply 
that, though not employed on the cupola, he was 
dismissed from the Opera. He was, as a matter of 
fact, engaged in a more congenial way. Between 
the dates of 1425 and 1427 he sculptured the tomb of 
Bartolommeo Valori in Santa Croce, and made two 
panels for the baptismal font at Siena. But he was 
also studying architecture more thoroughly, and with 
such good results that on December 20, 1427, he 
matriculated as magister in the Arte dei Maestri di 
Pietra. This gave him a firmer position than before. 



70 BRUNELLESCHI 

he being now one of the maestranze, under whom 
Brunelleschi was so restive. In fact, during the next 
year, when the second circular chain of girders in stone 
had to be placed, his name is again associated with 
those of Brunelleschi and the capo maestro Battista 
d' Antonio as joint designers. In 1430, when his salary 
as provveditore again ceased, it was because the Opera 
were employing him as a sculptor for the tomb of 
S. Zenobi, now in the Duomo. After 1436 he was 
working at the doors of the Baptistery, and very glad 
to leave Brunelleschi to his building. 



CHAPTER VIII 

BRUNELLESCHI AS MASTER OF MEN 

The strong will and potent personality of Brunelleschi 
shine out all through the records of this building. He 
was always among his employees, inspected every stone 
that was laid, as well as the material and cements, and 
had everything in perfect order. 

Rules were made that no workmen should descend 
from the cupola through the hours of labour. They 
carried up their provisions with them in the morning, 
and Brunelleschi and the master-masons may have been 
seen sitting on big stones, or afterwards on the wooden 
platform of the bridge, eating their bread and figs, and 
drinking their trebbiano wine. The use of wine was 
limited by rules. Seeing the danger to the masons in 
working at such a height, should their heads not be 



BRUNELLESCHI AS MASTER OF MEN 71 

clear, it was decreed that no wine should be sent up ^ 
unless it were previously mixed with a third part of 
water. Anyone breaking this rule was fined 10 lire. 

Another stringent rule which made a corollary to 
this, was that any master or labourer found drawing up 
food or an3i:hing whatsoever, which was not sanctioned 
by the Opera, should lose sixteen days' salary; and 
anyone who lent ropes for the purpose of drawing up 
such things should be fined 10 lire (Guasti, op. ciL, 
p. 80, doc. 219). 

Two large slabs of plaster were hung upon the walls 
to mark the absence or attendance of the masters and 
their respective men, and on February 7, 1424, 18 soldi 
were paid to a certain Giovanni di Ser Benedetto for 
a sand hour-glass to mark the hours of labour (Guasti, 
op. cit, p, 80, doc, 217, and p, 81, doc. 221). 

Everything was overruled by the Opera, and the 
meetings held there must have been continuous, if one 
may judge by the numberless deliberations which 
Guasti reports from their books. They even deliberated 
on August 28, 1427, that the scribe of the Opera, 
Filippozius, should enter in the books the names of 
the masters who on f^te-days went up to superintend 
the watering of the walls to keep the work moist. Also 
that if anyone, building at the summit, desired instead 
to work down below, his salary was to be lessened by 
one quarter. The extra quarter was evidently put on 
for the risk. 

Special rules were made for wet weather. When it 
rained and the work at the summit could not be carried 
on, if there were not work enough to employ them all 
below in the laborerium of the Opera, the names of all 



72 BRUNELLESCHI 

the masters were to be put into a bag, and five of them 
drawn every day. These fortunate five were to be 
employed at stone-cutting, brickwork, etc., in shelter, 
and receive their pay. 

Another, serious deliberation of the council was that 
no one should labour on the upper walls during the 
time of the preaching in the Lent of 1434, because the 
noise of the mallets and chisels would prevent the 
preacher in the Duomo below from being heard. 

All these by-laws and a multitude besides are quite 
enough to show that, though Brunelleschi could com- 
mand as far as the masonry of the cupola was concerned, 
he was working under the rule of a very arbitrary organi- 
zation ; and knowing his character, one can understand 
how all this surveillance and these hampering rules 
increased his dislike of the maestranze. 

He found a difficulty in the fact that his underlings 
were a number of masters, each commanding his own 
file of workmen. They wanted to follow out the ways 
of their guild, each taking his own commission for part 
of the work, and carrying it out his own way. These 
men declared that each one of them ought to be given 
one face of the octagon ; this not being done, they began 
to criticise Brunelleschi's plans and to form cabals against 
him. For a long time this moral friction continued. 
Brunelleschi was determined to be sole architect, and 
the others were jealous and restive under his arbitrary 
rule. At length, when he had found fault with some 
work a little more brusquely than usual, they struck. 
Not choosing to dispute his architectural knowledge, 
they said that the work was very fatiguing and perilous, 
and that unless their honorarium were very much raised 



BRUNELLESCHI AS MASTER OF MEN 73 

they would no longer go up to the cupola. Here they 
made a mistake, for their payment was at the option 
of the operaiy and not of the architect of the cupola. 
Filippo consulted the operaiy who promptly called a 
meeting on a certain Saturday evening, at which it 
was decided that the whole lot of masters — whose pay 
had already been largely augmented — ^^should be dis- 
missed. 

We can imagine Brunelleschi taunting these dis- 
turbers of his peace, as he passed by their crestfallen 
faces out of the meeting, saying: "You thought I 
could not do without you : now you will see." 

The next day he engaged several Lombards (Manetti 
says eight, Vasari asserts that they were ten), and, by 
showing them himself what he wanted done, they were at 
the end of the day quite at home in their work. The 
nonplussed " masters of the trowel," as Filippo scorn- 
fully called them, loitered about, feeling " out of it," for 
some weeks, and then condescended to send emissaries 
to the architect, offering to return on his own terms. 
He kept them on the tenter-hooks of suspense for some 
weeks, and then, as a favour to them, took them back 
at a lower salary than before. 

"Thus," adds Vasari sententiously, "where they 
thought to gain they lost, and in trying to revenge 
themselves on Filippo they only injured themselves." 
Vasari seems to imply that this took place early in the 
course of the building, but if the two jentries in the 
archives of the Duomo refer to the occasion, it must 
have taken place about Christmas, 1430. 

I can only find one entry about a Lombard being 
engaged, which is dated some months before this, when. 



74 BRUNELLESCHI 

on February 13, 1429, the Opera deliberated that the 
caput magister may engage a Lombard master {possit con- 
ducere unum magistrum Lombardum) to work and build 
on the cupola at the salary usual for that office. Prob- 
ably this man was the means of securing Lombard work- 
men when Brunelleschi needed them. 

The work went on energetically after this, the 
council ordering and ruling as usual. On August 27, 
1432, a decree was made that neither Filippo di Ser 
Brunellesco nor Battista, the head of the works, nor 
any other master of the Opera, shall for six months 
forward undertake any work or commission except only 
that of the cupola ; that if Filippo or Battista shall give 
any extraneous work to the masters employed there, 
they shall forfeit their commission, and consider them- 
selves dismissed. 

A similar decree was promulgated on June 20, 1436, 
when, wishing to bring the dome to a speedy conclu- 
sion, the council forbade anyone to absent himself 
from the works during all July under pain of dismissal. 
By this strenuous spurt at the last, after many years' 
labour, the great work was triumphantly brought to a 
conclusion (Plate IX.). 

By 1432 the dome was so far advanced that they 
began to think of models for the lantern. Six master 
builders of the Opera, including Ghiberti, and one 
ambitious lady, a member of the Gaddi family, sent 
in models; but the one designed by Filippo Brunel- 
leschi was ultimately accepted, and had to be enlarged 
and made in wood. Antonio Manetti, a clever master 
in wood, executed the model from Filippo's designs. 
His own was among the five rejected. 




Brogiphoto 



THE DUOMO, FLORENCE 



Plate IX 



BRUNELLESCHI AS MASTER OF MEN 75 

On July II, 1436, Nanni di Domenico, the servant of 
the operai, was ordered to buy five flasks of trebbiano wine, 
with white bread, melons, and plums, for the collation 
of the consuls of the Arte della Lana and the operai, 
when they inspected the model of the lantern. On 
July 24 Antonio Manetti received 35 lire 16 soldi 6 denari 
as the rest of the payment due to him for his work on 
the model designed by Brunelleschi.* 

It was while these models were being made and the 
question of the lantern was being discussed, just as the 
great work was nearly finished, that the maestranze and 
their extraneous architect had their fiercest dispute. 
Baldinucci gives a very graphic account of this great 
scandal. After saying that there are in every age and 
every country some sordid persons who are not ashamed 
to vilify and injure others, he continues: *' You must 
know, then, that the consuls of the Arte dei Fabbricanti 
(Building Guild), to whose rule every artificer was 
subjected, had up to that epoch, and at that time, 
demanded two taxes. One was called the * matricula- 
tion fee ' (when the apprentice graduated as master) ; 
the other was the annual tax paid by every person who 
was a member of that art. Now, the consuls of that 
time, seeing that Filippo Brunelleschi had intruded 
himself (s' era ingerito) in this grand building without 
matriculation, and without paying the said annual tax, 
they decided to proceed against him on this accusation. 
The signori opemi,\ being informed of this, strongly 

* Guasti, " La Cupola," etc., p. 92, doc. 267, 268. 

t Here we see that the operai, or administrative council of citizens, 
were quite distinct from the masters of the guild, and had not the 
same interests. 



76 BRUNELLESCHI 

opposed such an imprudent resolution, and gave orders 
to the Guild not to take any steps without their per- 
mission ; but some days having passed, and the affair 
gone to sleep (addormentata la cosa), the masters, with- 
out any respect either to the operai or Brunelleschi, 
unexpectedly caught the latter and put him into prison 
for not paying his fees. This 'strange and shameful 
deed' caused great astonishment and scandal in the city, 
some saying one thing and some another to explain it. 
At length the fact coming to the ears of the operai, they 
called an assembly, and made a solemn decree that 
Brunelleschi should be immediately released, and all the 
consuls of the Arte dei Maestri di Pietra e Legname 
should be in their turn imprisoned — the which command 
was promptly obeyed, to the good repute and honour of 
the operai and of Filippo, and with the applause and 
approbation of the entire populace." Here is the delibe- 
ration of the Opera on the occasion : 

" An. 1434, a' 20 agosto. 

" Operarii dicte Opere, etc., considerantes eonsules 
Artis Magistrorum civitatis Florentie; sub fide dicta 
eorum offitio, de non faciendo capi infrascriptum Filip- 
pum; fecerunt capi prefatum Filippum indebite et 
iniuste, et ex eo quod fieri fecit et facit edificium magne 
Cupole, et non solvit matriculam dicte Artis; quod 
resultat in dedecus et obprobrium dicti offitii, et ad hoc 
ut eorum offitium non deludatur; deliberaverunt quod 
provisor, caput magister et notarius dicte Opere, quam 
citius potermt, capi faciant eonsules dicte Artis, et re- 
comendent penes unum ex rectoribus civitatis Florentie, 
ad ipsorum instantiam ; et non possint relapsari absque 
eorum partito" (Guasti, **La Cupola," etc., p. 54, 
doc. 116. See doc. 3). 



/ 



BRUNELLESCHI AS MASTER OF MEN ^^ 

This is the story of Brunelleschi's defiance of the 
hitherto all-powerful Masonic Guild. He, being a man 
of his time, realized that the hour was come when art 
must be free, and throw off the ancient bonds that had 
held it for centuries. In those old times the guild did 
good service in protecting and treasuring genius and 
talent, which would have found no scope if standing 
alone ; it kept traditions together, and formed a school / 
from which all other schools sprang. But now that / 
education in art, as well as in literature, was universal, 
and no longer shut up in convents and secret guilds, 
a new era had dawned. Courtiers and citizens could 
write books as well as monkish scribes. Individual 
artists and architects might paint, design, and build as 
well as the masters of obsolete traditional guilds — better, 
indeed, for the fetters of tradition no longer bound 
them. 

The maestranze saw their monopoly passing away 
from them, and probably felt, though they would not 
confess it, that their old knowledge and skill, through 
constant dilution of their ranks by second-rate artisans, 
were also passing away. This was a spasmodic effort to 
retain their old power, but it failed. The great dome, 
which none of them had power to raise, stood tall and 
majestic before them, the work of a man who refused 
to join their guild ! They revenged themselves by evil 
prophecies. As the summit became more and more 
closed in, rumours went round the city that the whole 
thing would certainly fall in with a crash before the 
keystones were placed, and that, if Filippo carried out 
his impious defiance of architectural laws by placing 
such a weight of marble as he proposed to do in the 



78 BRUNELLESCHI 

lantern, ruin would certainly ensue, for the whole piazza 
was already strewn with the heavy marbles for the 
lantern. But Brunelleschi laughed them to scorn, and 
said " the heavier the weight, the better it would hold 
the cupola together." 

They were silenced, however, and had to put a good 
face on it, when, on August 31, 1436, the whole Opera- 
consuls and masters — were called on to make rejoicings 
when the dome was finally closed. Simone di Lorenzo, 
the servant of the Opera, spent 72 lire 12 soldi on the 
expenses of this feast of benediction. He paid trumpeters 
and pifferi (pipers) ; he bought wine, bread, meat, fruit, 
cheese, macaroni, and other things for the masters and 
operai ; the priests and Canons of the Cathedral being 
invited to share the feast. The benediction of the 
cupola was performed by the Bishop of Fiesole, who 
ascended the whole height of the dome to bless it. 
(Guasti, doc. 261, p. 91. See doc. 3.) 

All the bells of the city were rung in peals of joy, and 
Brunelleschi was greeted with vigorous applause from 
the populace wherever he went. No doubt the masters 
hated those peals of bells, and felt that the cheers were 
a slight to them. 

Is it, I wonder, a sad or a hopeful fact, that every 
glory is built on a past glory decayed? The masters 
could look around Italy and see the countless grand 
works built by their predecessors — works of which the 
fame could never be taken away from them. Even 
here in Florence they had for centuries set their seal ; 
and the Palazzo Vecchio, Santa Croce, Santa Maria 
Novella, and even the great polychrome cathedral itself, 
would remain for ages to speak of them. Sad for them 



BRUNELLESCHI AS MASTER OF MEN 79 

that the crown of their last work in Florence should 
have been placed by one who refused even to enter their 
ranks ! 

After this the work of the lantern commenced. For 
this scaffolding was necessarily erected. Battista 
d* Antonio, the head of the works, and Filippo di Ser 
Brunellesco, with two of the operai, viz., Mariotto 
Laurentii and Marco Benvenuti, eorum in offitiq college 
(sic), were, on January 15, 1436, sent to Campiglio* to 
inspect the quality of the marble there. The choice of 
marble seems to have dragged on a long time, for on 
July 17, 1438, we find the council again deliberating to 
send eight masters to Campiglio to experiment on the 
marble there, t 

Filippo and Battista, head of the works, went to see 
these trial pieces on September 12, but they appear not 
to have been satisfied, for on November 12 Giovanni 
di Piero, a stone-cutter, was commissioned to cut and 
polish fifty white marble blocks from the quarries at 
Carrara as follows : sixteen bases (eight for the larger 
columns, and eight for the smaller), all made to the 
precise measure given by Filippo and Battista — i.e., 
these sixteen bases to be two-thirds of a braccio high, 
hollowed in the centre as usual, and the remaining ones 
to be seven-eighths of a braccio high, the whole to be 
of perfect marble, and perfectly finished. J It was not 

* Campiglio is in the Pisan Maremma. The best quarry there 
belongs to Count Gherardesca. A certain marble from it is called 
Broccatello della Gherardesca. This was used in early^ times for the 
Baptistery, and the Church of the Spina at Pisa. 

f Of these, three have written after their names, " dixit nolle ire," so 
evidently they had wills of their own. 

J Guasti, " La Cupola." etc., p. 97, doc. 282. 



8o BRUNELLESCHI 

till August 21, 1439, that Battista and Filippo went to 
Carrara to inspect these bases when cut. 

On December 5, 1442, Pietro Bertini, of Settignano, 
had the commission to carve the columns of white 
Carrara marble to be placed on these bases, the precise 
measures being given. The archives also name the 
carmen who brought all this marble to Florence, or, 
rather, to Signa, and thence by river, and the price paid 
them.^ 

Brunelleschi never saw the crown of his dome 
finished; he died in 1446, and Michelozzi, his pupil, 
was elected provveditore in his stead. Antonio Manetti 
succeeded in 1452, and Bernardo del Borra in 1462. 
The "button" beneath the ball was ordered in 1467, 
and the ball in the January of the next year, 1467-68. 
This ball was cast by Andrea del Verrocchio, and was 
made of eight pieces of metal — brass and copper mixed 
with silver. It was J inch thick, and 7J feet in diameter. 
The cross cast by Paolo di Matteo, of two pieces of 
fine copper 5^ feet high, was ordered on August 4 in 
1470. The gallery surrounding the base of the cupola, 
of which Brunelleschi had left a design, was not added 
till early in the sixteenth century, and then his model 
was not used for it. 

"There should be," wrote Filippo, "an outside 
passage resting on brackets above the occhi (round 
windows), which shall have a perforated parapet about 
2 braccia (44 inches) high, for the beautifying of the 
smaller tribunes beneath. Or there might be two 
galleries, one over the other, or an ornate cornice, the 
upper one being open." From the expression "per- 
forated parapet," it would seem that Brunelleschi 



BRUNELLESCHI AS MASTER OF MEN 8i 

intended the gallery to harmonize in style with the 
beautiful perforated gallery on ornate brackets which 
forms such a noble cornice surrounding the whole 
church, but unfortunately, by the carelessness of the 
authorities of the Opera, this design of Filippo's was 
lost, and in 1507 a competition was offered for designs. 
Five were sent in, but the one chosen was a joint 
work of Simone del Pollaiolo, otherwise known as 
Cronaca, architect of the Palazzo Strozzi, Giuliano 
San Gallo, and Baccio d' Agnolo. In 1508 the order 
was given to take down the frieze which had been 
begun on two sides of the octagon. It was a frieze of 
white marble, inlaid with black, the design a scroll and 
foliage, which has a classic quality blended with the 
freedom and richness of the quattro-cento. It was 
taken down because judged too small and poor for 
such a huge cornice.* 

The eighth part of the gallery was unveiled on 
St. John's Day, 15 15, but it did not please the critical 
public, who said it would look very bald compared with 
the beautiful cornice, with its carved brackets, which 
surrounded the cathedral. Michael Angelo was a 
strong advocate for its suppression. He did not hesi- 
tate to call it 3.' gabbia da grtlli (cage for crickets), 
alluding to the little cages in which the Florentines are 
wont to imprison poor little tree-crickets on Ascension 
Day. The gallery was never finished, and certainly the 
bit which remains looks stiff and cold by the side of the 
fine older Lombard cornice beneath it*_ Our illustra- 
tions show both these galleries (see pp. 31 a^nd 82). 

* This frieze was afterwards used to decorate two chapels near that 
of San Zenobi in the Duomo. 




I'i^: 






-^ 






)) 






-5 









C.--\C\^ 



AS CITY ARCHITECT 83 

CHAPTER IX 

BRUNELLESCHI AS CITY ARCHITECT 

Although Filippo devoted himself so earnestly to the 
work of the dome, there were times between the critical 
stages of the catene and cross-buttresses when the work 
could go on for weeks, overlooked only by the master- 
builders employed under him. He was thus able to 
give his attention to other commissions, and as soon 
as he won the distinction of being provvisore of the great 
dome these commissions poured in on him. 

He soon became the fashionable architect, the most 
influential families coming forward one after the other 
to beg him to make plans for their houses, or palazzi, 
as the grandiose domestic buildings of the day began 
to be styled. From the early days of the republic, 
Florence had a solid style of domestic architecture all 
its own, or shared only with other of the independent 
Tuscan cities, whose safety depended chiefly on the 
strength of their walls. Between the constant wars of 
city with city, and the internal factions which devastated 
each single city, it became necessary that the home of 
an influential family that had a stake in the Government 
should be a fortress as well as a palace. A fortress, 
to be able to withstand the first impetus of a city broil, 
or rebellion of the populace ; a palace, to display the 
power and magnificence of the nobles, and to give 
shelter to all their partisans and dependents. Thus a 
Florentine palace a la mode was strong and solid as 
the Bastille, as far as regards the ground-floor, which 
had small iron-barred windows, and almost cyclopean 
F 2 



84 BRUNELLESCHI 

masonry, showing its descent from the Etruscans ; and 
elegant, richly decorated, and magnificent, in the upper 
stories, where Renaissance nobles lived their art- 
surrounded lives. There was a fine field for the career 
of a civil architect in Florence in those days, and 
Brunelleschi soon rose to eminence in that career. 
The first work with which we find his name connected 
is some internal alteration in the Palace of the Priors, 
where he had to transform some open loggie into rooms 
for the offices of the Monte del Comune.* He made a 
design for this part of the palace, but it did not satisfy 
him, and he would not put it in execution, so he went 
to Rome to study ancient architecture, and when he 
returned he built the rooms in the fine style they are 
shown at present.t Great stress is laid by all the 
biographers on this taking place in the time of Filippo's 
youth, so we take it as dating about 1417, during the 
time he was so frequently in Rome.J 

If this refers to the Palazzo Vecchio it is difficult 
now to distinguish Brunelleschi's part of the work as 
the building afterwards underwent a complete restora- 
tion by Baccio d' Agnolo. 

* The Monte del Comune was the treasury of the public funds. The 
introits were from taxes, custom dues, fines, tithes, penalties, and 
banking profits in general. The people took shares, as we do, in the 
funds, and received so much per cent, on their investments. 

t Baldinucci, p. 170, edition edited by Moreni. 

X " Occorse ne' tempi della sua giovinezza che s' ebbe a murare nel 
palazzo de' Priori 1' Uficio e Residenza degli Uficiali del Monte, e la 
stanza de' loro Ministri, che e in quello luogo, dov' erano la maggiore 
parte loggie con colonne fatte a pompa del palagio, ed a bellezza 
de' loro tempi stimate, che vi si possono ancora vedere. Lui ne fu 
richiesto e per architetto e perd isegno, e per conducerlo, e cosl fece." 
— Moreni, " Due Vite," p. 295. 



AS CITY ARCHITECT 85 

Hitherto his works had been only parts of buildings, 
such as the dome of the Barbadori chapel, and these 
adaptations. 

Filippo's next public work was the palazzo of the 
Captains of the Guelph faction, but the accounts of the 
building itself and its uses, and the part which Brunel- 
leschi had in it, are so conflicting that it has been one 
of the archaeological riddles of Florence for some time. 
In the first place, some guide-books call it the Arte 
della Seta, others Palazzo Comunale, some the Monte 
Comune, and others the Palazzo della Parte Guelfa. 
The fact is that at different eras it served all these 
purposes. 

This great and fine old edifice stands in the Via 
delle Terme, near the Via Por Santa Maria, and is 
as Protean as its names. The ground-story is of fine, 
solid old twelfth or thirteenth century architecture, the 
upper, of fifteenth-century Florentine style ; the interior 
is decorated with classic Corinthian pilasters. Fabriczy 
takes the whole building as Brunelleschi's even to the 
ground -floor, pinning his faith to a certain pretty 
moulding at the corners, in which the massive stones 
are chamfered so as to imitate a slender shaft, with 
foliage carvings at the capital and at the base, and 
says that ' in this corner pillar Brunelleschi wished to 
introduce an element of life and lightness into fa9ade 
decoration,' and that Leon Battista Alberti followed it 
in the Rucellai and other palaces.* 

With all due deference to Fabriczy, whose learning 

* This comer moulding is to be seen in several of the older buildings 
in Florence. The Palazzo dei Castellani in Piazza dei Giudici built in 
1333 is an instance. 



86 BRUNELLESCHI 

and research are immense, I think that in this case his 
judgment has erred. The ground-floor is, as regards 
its external architecture, of much earlier date than 
Brunelleschi. One has only to compare the clear-cut, 
staccato effect of the rustic masonry in a Renaissance 
palace such as the Pitti, the Strozzi, etc., with the 
solid, close-set, smooth-hewn building of the older 
thirteenth-century parts of the Bargello, the Palazzo 
Vecchio, the Badia, etc., to see that the basement of 
the Guelph palace is of the epoch of the latter buildings, 
t and not the former. Besides this, we may note that 
I though the interior is purely classic, the exterior is as 
\ purely Tuscan in style, as the architect harmonized 
^ his upper part to the older basement. If he had built 
f the whole it would have been in Renaissance style 
inside and out. Again, Fabriczy speaks of the Guelphic 
palace being built by Delia Luna and Brunelleschi, but 
it is a certain fact that all the biographers speak of a 
mere adaptation of an existing building to new pur- 
poses, but none of them speak of building the outer 
walls except in the upper stories. The date of the 
commission is not known, but, as the hall of audience 
was used for state ceremonies in 1422, it must have 
been before that year. 

I have made some researches into the former history 
of the palace. From the " Studi sul Centro di Firenze," 
published by the Communal Storico- Archaeological Com- 
mission, and from GuidoCarocci's " II Mercato Vecchio," 
we find that when the Ghibellines were exiled, and their 
goods confiscated, the Captains of the Guelph party used 
this one of the Lamberti palaces as their headquarters, 
and that in Brunelleschi's time they commissioned him 



AS CITY ARCHITECT 87 

to modify the interior, and make therein a large room of 
audience, for the Guelphs being in power at that time, 
it was the absolute seat of government. 

According to Manetti (Moreni, "Due Vite," p. 338), 
"the design included a certain flat pilaster resting on the 
cornice ; but in the side towards the Terme this pilaster 
was wrongly placed, and the effect Filippo meant to 
produce was spoilt. Manetti, bewailing the architect's 
ill-fortune in so often having his designs misrepresented, 
says, without naming the culprit, that it was the same 
who spoilt the fa9ade of the Innocenti Hospital. This 
was Francesco della Luna, said to be a scholar of 
Brunelleschi, who appears to have possessed a genius 
for making mistakes in architecture. He was a member 
of an old and wealthy family who had their palace in 
the centre of the city. Delia Luna had already raised 
the walls above the cornice some 2 braccia (about 
4 feet), when it was discovered that he had made 
many errors, and the commission for the building was 
given to Brunelleschi. This is Vasari's version; but 
Manetti speaks as though Francesco and other masters 
were only employed to begin the work on Brunelleschi's 
own plans, as he was away from the city, and that when 
he returned he superintended the works himself. 

Armed with a letter from the Syndic, we went to 
explore the Palazzo Guelfa, and found that between 
Vasari and modern botchers Brunelleschi's splendid 
hall of audience has been cruelly mutilated. When, in 
later days, the building was destined for the offices of 
the Monte Comune, Vasari blocked up the end of the 
room with an ugly staircase, put a floor halfway up its 
height, and threw out a loggia at the corner in the Via de' 



88 BRUNELLESCHI 

Carpacci, thrusting the heavy stone brackets right into 
the pretty columnar chamfering at the angle (Plate X.). 
Later utilitarians have still further cut the building up 
into numberless class-rooms for a comrnunal school ; they 
have covered the beautiful old timbered roof with lath 
and plaster, and whitewashed the Corinthian pilasters 
on the staircase. Could any other indignities have been 
offered to a grand work ? Yes ; they have cut a big square 
staircase window right across Brunelleschi's beautiful 
arched one ; it reaches from one floor to another, down 
through the fine old cornice which runs round the 
building. Sadly we wandered through the sordid class- 
rooms and lobby, tracing a fluted pilaster there, and one 
here, till we discovered and measured the whole length 
and breadth of the hall, which was once of magnificent 
proportions, nearly So feet long and 40 broad. There 
were three Corinthian pilasters at each end, and five at 
the sides. On one side were the four immense windows 
which were arched on the outside and square inside ; 
the mouldings are still to be seen. In Brunelleschi s 
plan these arched windows were probably filled in with 
the double arch, as those of his Pazzi and Pitti palaces 
were. Of the height of the hall we were not able to 
judge, as the present floor seems to cut off the pilasters 
at more than half their height. Only one little corner 
of the grand old timbered roof, of deep box squares 
richly carved, is left to show what it must have been ; 
our imagination could, however, picture the effect it 
must have produced when entire and profusely gilded, 
as Cinelli tells us it was. " Una sofiitta tutta dorata 
e bellissima in riguardo del tempo che fatta fu.*'* 
* Cinelli, *' Le Bellezze di Firenze," p. 576. 




Brogi photo 



VASARIS LOGGIA OF THE PALAZZO DI PARTE GUELFA, FLORENCE 
(Via di Carpaccio) 
Pla^e X 



AS CITY ARCHITECT 89 

The arms of the Guelph faction, given them by Pope 
Clement IV. — an eagle vert and a dragon — ^were then 
emblazoned in the hall. 

Although the interior was of such pure Renaissance 
style, yet Brunelleschi, as we have remarked, showed 
his good judgment in keeping the exterior to the old 
Tuscan style ; for the palace belonged to an institution 
of the early republic, and had the fortress-like character 
of those days. Indeed, he could not, being a man of 
correct taste, have grafted a Renaissance upper story 
on the solid old basement of the mediaeval Lamberti 
palace. The part of the building not used for the 
school is now utilized as a deposit for the archives 
of the suppressed Monte del Comune. 

In 1421 the Guild of Merchants commissioned Brunel- 
leschi to design a portico for the Foundling Hospital 
on Piazza della SS. Annunziata. Filippo prepared the 
plans ; but, as he was called to Milan to design a fortress 
for Duke Filippo Maria Visconti, he left his pupil or 
assistant, Francesco della Luna, to superintend the 
work at the Foundling Hospital. The State archives 
of Florence (book of the Innocenti Hospital) prove that 
Francesco della Luna was employed on this building 
from 1421 to 1444, sometimes alone, sometimes with 
other masters. It appears from Manetti's account that 
Filippo had not made a model in wood, but only drawn 
the designs and explained them viva voce to Francesco 
and the masters and men employed under him. On 
his return from Milan, Filippo went at once to see the 
work, and was much displeased to find that Francesco 
had used his own mind on a very important point, and 
had in his opinion ruined the building. He had added 



90 BRUNELLESCHI 

a portion of bare wall at the south end, which destroyed 
the symmetry of Filippo's design ; and not only this, but 
he had also continued the cornice forming the architrave 
above the arches, turning it down at the ends so as to 
form a framework for the wall, instead of placing a 
pilaster at the ends of the building to give it a support. 
Filippo was horrified. 

"An architrave which runs perpendicularly is an 
utter falsity in architecture," he cried to Francesco. 
" Where did you ever see such a thing ?" 

To excuse himself, Francesco said he got it from the 
Baptistery. (There is a similar cornice framing the 
eight sides of the highest part.) 

" If the ancients made such a bad mistake as 
that," said Brunelleschi bitterly, "it is the only one 
in that edifice, and yet you must needs choose to 
repeat it." 

This is the version of Baldinucci (see Moreni, " Due 
Vite," etc., p. 267), and he adds that the error was 
irremediable, unless a great part of the corner wall were 
pulled down; so it had perforce to remain as it was, 
and as it is to this day. 

The proportions of the arcade forming the portico of 
this hospital are peculiarly light and harmonious, and 
one can easily imagine how vexed the designing architect 
must have been to have them ruined by an idiotic archi- 
tectural impossibility. The errors so plainly indicated 
by the biographers Manetti and Baldinucci are confirmed 
by the books of the Foundling Hospital, which contain 
entries of the payments made to the builders from 1419 
onwards. I quote Fabriczy's extracts from the " Primo 
libro di Conti dell' edificazione del nostro Spedale," 



AS CITY ARCHITECT 91 

marked " A. 1419 e 1420," etc.,* pp. 555 to 575. The 
first (1419) speaks of the hospital which the Arte della 
Seta wished to build, and records that 1,700 gold florins 
were paid to Messer Rinaldo degli Albi^izi for a walled 
garden, as part of the site. In 1422 Filippo Brunel- 
leschi's name appears as one of the operai.f 

We gather from these account-books that on August 6, 
1419, Maestro Ambrogio di Lionardo began the founda- 
tions of the hospital, and the usual tax on beginning a 
building was paid (fols. gr and gv). By March 24, 
1419-20, the foundations were laid for the portico 
(fol. I4r). 

Jacopo di Agnolo di Bono of Settignano is paid on 
August 17, 1420, 20 florins for bringing the column 
and capitals (fol. 31V). 

On January 4, 1420, Andrea, a workman, received 
8 lire 8 soldi and 6 denari for setting up the first 
column. Then follow other payments for setting up 
pillars, placing pilasters, and building walls, till, on 

* In the title-page is written in old Italian ; •' This book of the 
Hospital of Santa Maria degli Innocenti was begun by Andrea di Bona- 
ventura, and by me, Andrea di Domenico, manovale (workman)." 

t The operai formed the council of administration when any archi- 
tectural work was going on. The members were representatives of the 
patrons and of the builders, the chief master of the latter usually being 
one of them. Here we have in the queer orthography of the time : 

'• Operai del suddetto spedale per tutto aprih, 1422. 

Paolo di Ridolfi di Paolo Lottj ) , u j n 

T, ^ . . J. ^. . J- T^ • \ pel membro della seta. 

Patnzio di Giovanni di Franciesco ) '^ 

Niccolo d' Andrea Carducci, pel membro del taglio. 

Jacopo di Ghueriante da Empoli. 

Lorenzo di Pietro Borsi, pel membro de fondachaj e Orafi. 

Filippo di Ser Brunellesco." 



92 BRUNELLESCHI 

March i6, 1423, Albizzo di Piero, stone-worker, is 
paid 853 lire 2 soldi 6 denari for cutting nine arches 
for the portico, and besides this 4 gold florins for the 
rounds between each arch {i.e., the frames to Andrea della 
Robbia's babes in swaddling clothes (fol. 62r). In 1424 
is a significant little note. Buto di Nicholo {proveditore 
of the works) is to be paid 11 soldi for his expenses in 
going to Pistoja to fetch Filippo di Ser Brunellesco, 
who was wanted by the op^rai (fol. 86r). The counsel 
of the designing architect was no doubt required, but 
not for the offending architrave, which was not yet 
placed ; that comes in April, 1425, when Albizzo di 
Piero, the stone-cutter who made the arches, was paid 
317 lire 4 soldi for 61 braccia of " cornice e architrave 
di concio" (ornamental cornice and architrave). 

It seems strange to begin a building by its fa9ade, 
v^ and to add the building itself afterwards, yet this is what 
must have been in great part done at the Foundling, 
for after these entries, up to 1425, we find the accounts 
only refer to the walls and floors and roofs of the main 
edifice, and they go on up to 1449. The chief master- 
builder of this part appears to have been a certain 
Maestro Gieri, with his sons Antonio and Francesco, 
whose names are constantly down for large payments. 
It is difficult to say what part Francesco della Luna 
really took in the work. Fabriczy mentions no pay- 
ments made to him, but he is one of the operai in 1427, 
where the page of the records begins : 

** 1427. Al tempo degP infrascritti operai cheentraron 
inficio {sic) adj primo di maggio detto anno 1427." (In 
the time of the undermentioned operai who entered in 



\ 



AS CITY ARCHITECT 93 

office on the first day of May in the said year 
1427.) 

"Francesco della Luna, setaiuolo. 
Jacopo di Ser Francesco Ciaj, ritagliatore. 
Sanbene (Salimbene) di Lionardo Bartolino, 
fondachaio." 

Fabriczy translates operaio in this case as " workman," 
but it is a misinterpretation, the operai being, as I have 
said, the administrative council. From the early 
ages all works referred to the " time " (in tempore) of 
such and such a council of operai. Francesco della 
Luna formed one of the council in virtue of his office 
as head of the works. He is again mentioned as operaio 
from 1435 till 1440. In fol. 46r, 1435, he is distinctly 
called proveditore, or master-builder. 

In 1437 (fol. I26r), when Francesco is still acting as 
operaio, Bocaccio, who keeps the book of records, is the 
proveditore. In any case, the name of Francesco della 
Luna is continuously in the archives as one in authority, 
while Brunelleschi's only appears at first, so we may 
suppose that he either resigned when his design was 
altered, or that he was merely engaged as designing 
architect, and not actual builder. 

It is also possible that between the dome and the works 
of the Church of San Lorenzo, which were begun in 
about 1425, Brunelleschi had more important works on 
hand, and left the Foundling Hospital to his assistant. 

There is another loggia in Florence very like this 
one, which is attributed to Brunelleschi — ^the Loggia di 
S. Paolo in S. Maria Novella. The proportions and 
style are very similar, and here again La Robbia 



94 BRUNELLESCHI 

medallions adorn the spaces between the arches, but 
there is no documental proof to be found that Brunel- 
leschi had anything to do with the building. The two 
medallions at the corners have the dates 145 1 and 
1495, both too late for him, unless the decorations were 
added much later than the building (Plate XL). 

The work of Filippo Brunelleschi in the cathedral 
was not confined to the cupola. He took part in most 
of the councils held in the Opera, and his advice was 
always respected. In 1428 the Opera decided that the 
central tribune in the cathedral should be dedicated to 
St. Zenobio,* and that a hollow altar (altare vuoto) should 
be constructed, beneath which the tomb of the saint 
should be placed. A statue of him 5^ feet high was to 
be placed above, and the whole surrounded by a grating, 
so that people might see and not touch. 

It was not till April 30, 1430, two years after this 
"deliberation," that Filippo di Ser Brunellesco and 
Battista d' Antonio, head of the works, really had a 
commission to design " a fine and worthy altar for the 
tomb of St. Zenobio which Ghiberti, the most skilled 
sculptor for these things (' scultore come a piu perito 
di quelle cose ') was making." Again the inseparable 
but rival names are associated. Ghiberti's beautiful 
bronze sarcophagus is world-famous, but Brunel- 
leschi's subterranean shrine is rarely visible, being 
only open on the f6te of St. Zenobio, May 25. The 

* The cult of this saint was revived in 1330, when the Bishop Fran- 
cesco da Cingolo found the body of St. Zenobio 18 feet below his altar 
in the Church of Santa Reparata. He had the head taken out, covered 
with silver, and put into a strong stone cofifer, and a special day was set 
apart for the veneration of the saint. 




THE LOGGIA OF SAN PAOLO, FLORENCE 



Urogi ^0ta 



Plate XC 



AS CITY ARCHITECT 95 

work was begun the same year; at least, the vault 
beneath was built, " so that the floor above should not 
sink." Affairs seem to have dragged, however, for in 
1438 a council of masters was called, and the following 
report* given : " The sarcophagus of St. Zenobio is to be 
placed in the centre under the arch of the said chapel 
facing the choir. It is recommended that the vault 
beneath shall be made as flat as possible to give more 
space below, and that in its roof a window shall be 
left which will come partly under the upper altar and 
partly above the altar below (the size of the window to 
be the width of the altar, and 2 feet 9 inches in height. 
This window has two uses — one to air the vault below, 
and the other that devotees in the church above may see 
the lights on the altar below. The sarcophagus made 
by Lorenzo Ghiberti is to be placed beneath the upper 
marble altar, the front of it being toward the back of the 
altar, so that devotees at the window may have that, as 
well as the shrine below, before their eyes. Before this 
window there shall be a grating . . . and this part 
shall remain always open. There shall, moreover, be 
in the front of the tomb a door, so that the silver- 
covered head may be taken out and replaced as occasion 
requires. This part shall be covered by the palio of the 
altar.. It is understood that in the lower chapel, where 
the bones of St. Zenobio lie, lamps shall be always lit 
and devotions maintained." t 

* I have shortened this from the prolix Italian of the original 
given in Cavallucci's "S. Maria del Fiore" (Storia documentata), 
pp. 163, 164. 

f The translation of the body of St. Zenobio from the catacombs of 
the Duomo, where it was placed in 1330, to the new subterranean 
chapel made by Brunelleschi and Battista d' Antonio, was celebrated 



96 BRUNELLESCHI 

The subterranean chapel is only a very small one. 
The ribs of the vaulting form a depressed arch, 
proving that the advice to " keep the roof flat " was 
followed, as well as that regarding the window. There 
is neither fresco nor sculpture, nor even a bit of 
moulding to adorn it. Even the altar is but a slab 
of stone on four pillars. The chapel contains the 
funeral urn which held the head of St. Zenobio, and 
the extremely mediaeval sarcophagi of two early Bishops 
— St. Mauritius and St. Probus. 

Brunelleschi also had a good deal to do with the 
building of the two sacristies, which are made in the 
solid parts between the three tribunes, that help to 
support the cupola. In 1442 a council was held to 
discuss the interior decoration of the older of the two 
sacristies. Lorenzo Ghiberti advised adorning the 
roof and walls with mosaic, and making the presses of 
white marble, with doors and shelves of intarsia (inlaid 
wood). Neri di Gino, Giovanni di Ser Luca, and 
Francesco della Luna voted for intarsia entirely. 
Filippo Brunelleschi voted that the sacristy should be 
entirely faced with marble, and the presses made of 
polished coloured marble, the doors being of bronze 
chiselled with foliage designs, and lined with wood 
damascened with bronze. Some other masters who 
were marble-cutters advised inlaid marble (it was evi- 
dently every man for himself), because they said intarsia, 
being only wood, was not durable enough. Intarsia 
carried the day, however, and Agnolo d' Arezzo and 

with great pomp in 1439, and was attended by Pope Eugene and the 
Emperor Palaeologus, with all the members of the Council at Florence 
which met to propose the union of the Greek and Latin Churches. 



AS GITY ARCHITECT 97 

Antonio Manetti were among those who had the com- 
mission, though it is said Donatello gave the designs. 

This sacristy contains a remarkable specimen of 
Brunelleschi's ingenuity — his famous volta piana (flat 
arch). This does not mean merely a depressed arch, but 
literally a straight and flat bridge built of long blocks 
of smoothly hewn stone placed slantingly on each side 
of a keystone, and self-supporting. It is, in fact, the 
masonry of the arch without the curve. When, between 
the years 143 1 and 1440, while Donatello and Luca 
della Robbia were carving their lovely groups of singing 
maids and joyful children for the organ-gallery and the 
one for the choir, which were to be placed over the 
doors of the two sacristies, it was necessary to prepare 
the stairways that gave access to them.* The only 
means of entrance was by carrying a passage right 
across the sacristy, and the crucial question was how 
to do this without its being a blemish to the interior 
' of the well-proportioned sacristy. An arch would pre- 
suppose pillars or pilasters, which would spoil the 
square of the room and take up space. 

Brunelleschi came to the rescue with his inventive 
genius, and threw this bridge across the entrance, with 
a sculptured and perforated parapet which forms a fine 
cornice above the arch of the door. The great stones 
seem supported on air, yet they have made a safe passage 
for nearly five centuries, by which the singers may pass 

* The commission was given on October 5, 1436, as the following 
deliberation of operai, quoted by Baldinucci (note to p. 284), shows : 
" Praefati Operarii deliberaverunt, et commiserunt Philippo Ser Brunel- 
leschi faciendi voltas, et arconem; pro ut est ab eo designatus in 
Sacrestia nova, ecc." 



98 BRUNELLESCHI 

to their gallery without disturbing the priests robing 
themselves below. This interesting work was at one 
time plastered over, so that the peculiarity of its con- 
struction was quite lost sight of. The stones of the " flat 
arch " are now cleared and visible, though the gallery 
has not been of much practical use since the removal 
of Donatello's and La Robbia's famous sculptures to 
the museum of the Opera. 

. In 1435 Brunellesco was commanded by the authorities 
to prepare a plan for the choir of the Duomo. His 
design was an octagon enclosure which was temporarily 
executed in woodwork. It remained so till the time of 
the Grand- Duke Cosimo, who commissioned Baccio 
Bandinelli to put it into a richer form in marble. 
Some of his marble panels in relief are now to be seen 
in the museum of the Opera; others remain in the 
parapet of the choir. 



CHAPTER X 

BRUNELLESCHI AS CHURCH-BUILDER 

In the beginning of the fifteenth century the very ancient 
Church of San Lorenzo (Plate XIL), which dated from 
the time of St. Ambrose, was in such a state of dilapida- 
tion as to render it unsafe, and the popolani of the 
commune decided to rebuild it.* It was first erected 
in 390, by a widow lady named Giuliana, and had been 

* Del Migliore and others assert that the old church was burned, but 
this has been convincingly disproved by Moreni and Canon Cianfogni. 




S Plate XII 



THE CHURCH OF SAN LORENZO, FLORENCE 
(1423) 



Brcgiphoio 




Brogiphoto 
INTERIOR OF THE CHURCH OF SAN LORENZO, FLORENCE 
Plate XIII 



AS CHURCH-BUILDER 99 

restored and richly endowed in 1059-60 as a collegiate 
church. It was now decided to enlarge it, and the 
Signoria conceded to the Canons a street behind the 
tower called Via dei Preti, with faculty to oblige the 
owners of the houses there to sell their property to the 
Church. 

The first stone was laid in 1418 by Pope Martin V., 
who was then a refugee in Florence. The Prior of the 
church was a dabbler in architecture, and assumed the 
office of making the plans himself. He had commenced 
to place his brick pilasters, and the work was beginning 
to be criticised, when one day Giovanni di Bicci de' 
Medici asked Brunelleschi to dine with him, and talk 
over the plans for the sacristy and a family chapel 
which he had promised to add to the church at his own 
expense. During the conversation Giovanni dei Medici 
sounded Filippo as to his opinion of the Prior's archi- 
tecture. He generously praised it, but Giovanni 
asked : " Could not you suggest anything better ?" 

" Doubtless," replied Filippo ; and he launched into 
an enthusiastic description of the noble temple he would 
have made, if he had been the architect. 

Giovanni de' Medici, who was both wealthy and 
patriotic, found his imagination fired by this, and he 
said : " If other families who want chapels will only 
come fonyard and aid the expenses, I will build not 
only the sacristy but the cappella maggiore (tribune) as 
well, and we will throw away the present plans and 
erect your grand temple."* 

Filippo's plan was drawn for a large basilica in form 
of a Latin cross, with a nave, two aisles, and a raised 
* See Moreni, " Due Vite," etc., pp. 339, 340. 
G 2 



lOO BRUNELLESCHI 

tribune. The proportions were noble and harmonious, 
the design simple yet grand. But it did not meet with 
general approval. Richa (" Delle Chiese," vol. v., p. 17) 
says there were tumults among the popolani to such a 
degree, that the Commune, seeing the works were 
stopped, made a proclamation of exile for life (bando di 
vita) against anyone who opposed Brunelleschi's plan 
being put into execution. 

Giovanni de' Medici's example was followed by several 
of the principal families, who in return for large gifts of 
money wished to have chapels in the church. The 
first patrons were seven — ^the Rondinelli, Ginori, Stuffa, 
Neroni, Marco di Luca (Corsi) and Ciai families. After- 
wards the number was increased by the Medici of Via 
Larga, MarignoUi, Taddei, Martelli, Inghirami, Aldo- 
brandi, and Cambini. Funds being thus found, the 
foundation-stone was laid on August 16, 1425, by Arch- 
bishop Amerigo Corsini, and Brunelleschi's basilican 
church began to rise. Having recovered from their 
chagrin at the change of plans, the citizens took great 
interest in the building, so much so that the continual 
concourse of people looking on gave great annoyance 
to the workmen. Symonds* says that " Brunelleschi 
in 1425 designed the basilica of S. Lorenzo, after an 
original but truly classic type, remarkable for its sobriety 
and correctness. What he had learned from the ruins 
of Rome he here applied in obedience to his own artistic 
instinct. S. Lorenzo is a columnar edifice with round 
arches and semicircular apses. Not a form or detail 
in the whole church is, strictly speaking, at variance 
with Roman precedent, and yet the general effect 
* " Renaissance of Fine Arts," p. 73. 




Alinari photo 



CAPITAL OF A COLUMN IN THE BADIA, FIESOLE 



Plate XV 






AS CHURCH-BUILDER loi 

resembles nothing we possess of antique work. It is 
a masterpiece of intelligent Renaissance adaptation," 

We give a view of the nave of the church which 
shows the simple purity of line which is a mark of 
Brunelleschi's architecture (Plate XIIL). He has 
chosen ornate Corinthian capitals with an abacus, 
supporting beautifully moulded circular arches, Jtb/^ 

A curious limping effect is remarked by many writers, » WmT 
caused by the fact that the columns have only a slight A>*' * 
plinth and no base, which gives the effect of their stand- 
ing lower than the pilasters, which have a higher base. 
Baldinucci (Moreni, ** Due Vite," etc., p. 248) says this 
was a license taken by the builders, who continued the 
work after Filippo's death, and was done in revenge for 
his successful rivalry of them during his life. They also 
altered his design of the tribune, as we find from a long 
and quaint account of a master, Giovanni di Domenico 
Gaioli, in a letter to Giovanni de' Medici, in which he 
gives the blame of the infidelity to the design of Brunel- 
leschi to Antonio Manetti. However, the general effect 
is so fine, that this may be taken as a mere bit of pseudo- 
criticism without much value. 

Brunelleschi's scheme for the chapels, which in many 
churches are of different and often inharmonious designs, 
is uniform and analogous to the classic simplicity of the 
building. They form a continuous row of simply moulded 
arches, alternated with fluted Corinthian pilasters with 
a cornice above them. The Corinthian was Brunel- 
leschi's favourite order, but, as Burckhardt says, "he 
gave it a grace all his own" (Plate XV.). In his 
hand the acanthus became varied and mingled with 
other forms and mouldings, so that his columns are 



102 BRUNELLESCHI 

nearly as multiform as those of the Lombard builders. 
Unlike them, however, he kept the design uniform in the 
same building. Indeed, the perfect homogeneousness 
of his buildings is their greatest charm. 

The sacristy had been already begun while the ques- 
tion of the church was pending. Before it was finished 
Giovanni de' Medici died; but his son Cosimo (Pater 
Patriae) was equally large-minded, and continued the 
work of his father. It was finished by Brunelleschi 
himself before he died, and is one of the best specimens 
of his adaptation of classic forms to modern uses. The 
doorways as Filippo designed them are noble pillarless 
arches with rich sculptural embellishments. Cosimo's 
tomb by Verrocchio stands in a similar finely moulded 
arch. A frieze of medallion heads of seraphim runs 
round the whole edifice, and above this the arches of 
the simply groined roof arise. 

Every touch of ornamentation except Donatello's 
bronze doors is classic, and it was about these doors 
that the two old friends had (as Manetti tells us) a 
serious quarrel. The doorways had been left unfinished 
till it was decided whether the doors were to be of wood 
or bronze. At length Donatello had the commission to 
cast them in bronze, and, unfortunately, the order for the 
portals of them in macigno (a hard dark stone) was 
also given to him. He was so proud and arrogant 
about this, that he never consulted Filippo or anyone 
else as to the style in which the doorways should be, 
and he certainly kept to classic pillar and pediment; 
but the effect of two short fat columns and a heavy 
triangular pediment stuck in the centre of Brunelleschi's 
sculptured arch and flanked by his tall fluted Corinthian 




THE CAPELLA PAZZI, SANTA CROCE, FLORENCE 



Alinari photo 



Plate XVII 



AS CHURCH-BUILDER 103 

pilasters is not happy. In fact, it detracted from Dona- 
tello's own fame, and brought scorn on Filippo himself. 
He, however, published some satirical sonnets which 
announced that the little stone doorway with its bronze 
doors was not his, nor was he, in fact, responsible for 
anything that stood between one pilaster and the other. 
The pretty cloister and Canons' houses were designed 
by Filippo, though some changes were made when 
Michael Angelo built the Laurentian Library. On 
March 16, 1435, the Signoria ordered the enlargement 
of the Piazza di San Lorenzo,* probably to giye greater 
majesty to the fagade, which was, however, never placed. 

We now come to one of his masterpieces, the chapel 
of the Pazzi family in the cloister of Santa Croce. It 
was begun at the expense of Andrea Pazzi and his 
brothers. Most of Brunelleschi's biographers date the 
commission 1420, but Jodoco del Badiat gives an 
extract from Andrea's Portata al Catasto (tax-papers) 
for 1433, in which he says he has 2,000 florins in the 
Monte Comune, which his son Piero will inherit, but 
that for six years the interest is alienated, having been 
pledged four years since to the operai of S. Croce to 
build the chapter-house and chapel in the cloister there. 
This points pretty decisively to 1429 as the date of the 
commencement of the building. It might have been 
fixed much more certainly if Messer Andrea's libri 
della muraglia (books of the building) of the chapter- 
house — which books were continued by his son Jacopo 

* Gaye, " Carteggio." etc., vol. i., p. 552. 

t " Raccolta delle Migliori Fabbriche antiche e modeme di Firenze," 
part i., p. 15. 



104 BRUNELLESCHI 

— had not been confiscated and destroyed after the 
conspiracy. The work was presumably nearly finished 
by 1443, when Andrea hurried the builders to finish it, so 
that Pope Eugenius IV,, who came to Santa Croce on 
February 7, might have the use of the room above the 
chapter-house, in which, in fact, he dined on that day, 
Messer Andrea, dying in 1445, decreed in his will that 
the interest of 16,000 florins invested in the Monte 
(and which afterwards would belong to his wife and 
sons) should, until the work was finished, be employed 
in this building. The family protested against this 
entire alienation of their property, and they must have 
obtained a modification of it, for the will of Antonio 
dei Pazzi, made in 1451, proves that the building had 
been completed by himself and his three brothers, each 
contributing a third part to the expense. 

In this beautiful little building Brunelleschi deter- 
mined to show how his studies in classic architecture 
might revolutionize the art, which had fallen into 
mannerism in the hands of the masters of the Building 
Guild. The ground-plan of the chapel is square, with 
an apse surmounted by a dodecagonal depressed cupola. 
The decorations of the cupola are by Luca della Robbia. 
They consist of medallions with beautiful reliefs of the 
four Evangelists, and the twelve Apostles beneath them, 
in white on a blue ground. The drum of the cupola is 
pierced by twelve round windows. 

The building has a charming atrium in the form of a 
waggon-vaulted arcade, with a small dome over the 
central arch, which is decorated with majolica medal- 
lions by Luca della Robbia, and has the Fazzi arms 
in the centre. The outer columns and the pilasters on 




Brogiphoto 
VESTIBULE OF THE CAPELLA PAZZI, SANTA CROCK, FLORENCE 
Plate XVIII 




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Private photo 
TRIBUNE OF THE CHURCH OF SANTO SPIRITO, FLORENCE 
Plate XXII 



AS CHURCH-BUILDER 105 

the wall of the fafade are composite ; the four windows 
between the pilasters are simple round arches without 
columns, the inner arch being richly moulded. In the 
door Brunelleschi has reproduced Vitruvius' triangular 
pediment.* It is, however, decorated as Vitruvius 
never imagined, with a relief in the tympanum repre- 
senting St. Andrew with a cross in his hand and two 
angels. He has, however, atoned to the classics for 
this by decorating his architrave with two very classical 
genii, holding a bay wreath, encircling the Pazzi arms, 
two upright dolphins and five crosses. Above the 
columns runs a broad cornice with a row of medallion 
seraphim, which has been attributed either to 
Desiderio di Settignano or to Donatello. 

Altogether the Pazzi chapel is a beautiful little build 
ing, and a very important one, as it marks the birth of 
Renaissance architecture. Whether this was an un 
mitigated gain may to some minds be doubtful, for the 
humanist movement of the times in Italy caused the 
Italians to seize this renascent classic style with such J 
avidity, that it may be said to have entirely choked f 
off the development of Italian Gothic. Italy lost a / 
warm, rich, symbolic and elegant style which might 
have developed into something glorious, and her 
architecture was put back into the bonds of classic rule. 
Sculpture, which was the visible interpreter of religion 
in Lombard and Gothic architecture, was now entirely 

* It is possible that this is the first Italian instance of this revival, 
which afterwards became so hackneyed and so abused; for Brunel- 
leschi's imitators, led by Michelozzi, did not hesitate to vary it by 
truncating the upper point of the triangle, leaving it broken, or making 
an arched pediment with the keystone of the arch left out. 



\ 



io6 BRUNELLESCHI 

severed from its sister art. A few genii playing among 
garlands, as they used to do on Roman tombs, or two 
floating seraphs holding a circlet, were now the only 
decorations for an architrave, while the arch lost the 
old profuse richness of moulding and scroll, of niche 
and statue, and was beautified only with set classic 
designs. The theory was that architecture could stand 
alone, and that purity of line and of form was its true 
and only distinctive mark. Certainly Brunelleschi was 
past-master in the art of pure lineal design, and harmony 
of parts in form. 

The Florentine Lodge appears to have broken up 
soon after this, but it was first divided into two parties. 
Such artists as clung to the richly ornate older style 
went off to Venice and joined the Lombards there. Of 
these the principal were Sansovino and Luca Fancelli, 
but even they were converts to Renaissance architecture, 
though they held to richness of decoration. The others, 
such as San Gallo, Baccio Pontelli and Giuliano da 
Majano, went to Rome, where numberless Renaissance 
buildings were then springing up. 

The architect's grand masterpiece was the Church 
of Santo Spirito, which dates from about 1428 
(Plate XX.). 

Every art historian agrees that the Church of Santo 
Spirito was built by Brunelleschi, but owing to the 
popular legend that it was begun after being destroyed 
by fire on the occasion of the ffetes for the entrance 
of Gian Galeazzo Visconti, Duke of Milan, in 1470, 
it has remained a problem how an architect could build 
a church which was begun twenty-four years after his 




THE CHURCH OF SANTO SPIRITO, FLORENCE 



Bro^ photo 



Plate XX 



AS CHURCH-BUILDER 107 

death. Baldinucci^ explains this problem. He asserts 
that the fire of 1470 took place in the old church of 
Santo Spirito, and that the new church, which was 
begun between 1428 and 1430, and was then in process 
of building, stood next to it, and was not touched by 
the fire. 

This new church was the actual result of a religious 
revival. A certain eloquent preacher named Francesco 
Mellino, to whom Vasari gives his nickname of 
Francesco Zoppo (Lame Francis), awoke the ambition 
of the congregation by inciting them to build a new 
and more worthy temple, saying it was a shame to 
them that the principal church of that quarter of the 
city should be so poor and ineffective, having neither 
piazza nor other convenience. Several of the parish- 
ioners, such as Messer Lorenzo Ridolfi, Bartolommeo 
Corbinelli, Neri Capponi, Goro di Stagio Dati, united 
together and obtained from the Signoria permission to 
build a fine temple. 

They elected five operai, or administrators of the 
building funds, and Stoldo Frescobaldi, who was very 
rich and devout, became treasurer, providing the funds 
for the beginning of the work from his own private 
purse. Other patrons soon followed suit, and Filippo 
Brunelleschi was chosen as architect. His first plan 
would have given the church a different orientation. 
He wanted to make a grand front on the banks of the 
Arno, but there were insuperable difficulties in the way 
of this project. The house-owners in Via Santo Spirito 
absolutely refused to demolish their houses, so a space 
had to be cleared further back, and the facade faced 

• Moreni, •• Due Vite," etc., pp. 251, 253. 



io8 BRUNELLESCHI 

south-west, as at present. Vasari, in his essay on 
Architecture, says that Brunelleschi took as his model 
the Church of theSS. Apostoli, which is said to have been 
built under Charlemagne, and to be a wonderful speci- 
men of good architecture for the times. It is more 
probable that he used his classical studies in Rome, and 
the similarity of style with SS. Apostoli is accounted 
for by the affinity of that church to the Roman style of 
the architecture in Charlemagne's time. 

The proportions of the whole church of Santo 
Spirito are so noble, and yet the elements so simple, 
that it is a masterpiece of architecture. The ground- 
plan is a Latin cross ; the colonnades which divide the 
nave from the aisles are carried on round the transepts 
and into the tribune with a very fine and original 
effect. 

One might personally have preferred a base beneath 
the columns instead of the stilted abacus above them, 
but no doubt Brunelleschi had his own reasons for 
increasing the richness of the upper portion. He has 
made here very small use of the pilaster. Even the 
four great piers which uphold the dome have their 
flatness relieved by the half-columns clustered around 
part of their height. 

The dome is peculiar ; it is raised on four arches with 
embossed circles in the spandrels. The whole design 
is utterly unlike that of S. Lorenzo ; indeed, Brunel- 
leschi never repeated himself. He used to say that, if 
he had to make lOO models of churches or other edifices, 
he would have made them all different one from the 
other. In S. Lorenzo, where the aisles are much lower 
than the nave, the chapels viewed from the nave have 



, AS CHURCH-BUILDER 109 

the effect of a smaller arch set within a larger one. Here 
the arches of the chapels which line the aisles are of 
the same height as those of the nave, which gives 
a most spacious effect. They are carried out with 
Filippo's usual conformity to the general style of the 
building. The mouldings round the arches forming 
the chapels are more bold and relieved than in 
S. Lorenzo ; the pilasters are replaced by half-columns, 
precisely similar to those of the nave. 

D'Agincourt says that Santo Spirito shows a great 
advance on S. Lorenzo : " The plan is in happier 
proportions, the distance of the columns better under- 
stood ; the half-pillars substituted for the dry and thin 
pilasters give a greater feeling of support. The orna- 
mentation is more soberly distributed, and less heavy ; 
in fact, what strikes one most on entering Santo Spirito 
is a certain unity and elegance, conjoined to a simple 
and robust character." 

The spacious and noble effect of the colonnade con- 
tinued round the back of the tribune is very fine. After 
Brunelleschi's death the work was continued by other 
masters, chiefly of the school of Brunelleschi's classical 
revival. In the sacristy Andrea Sansovino imitated 
the Pantheon on a small scale. Baccio d' Agnolo built 
the bell-tower, which, with its peculiar flying buttresses 
surrounding the summit, is a design more unique than 
artistic. 

Still, the church as it stands is not quite what Brunel- 
leschi intended it to be. According to some biographers, 
his plans were not very fairly followed. Manetti, speak- 
ing of him in his " Huomini Singulari," says : " He 
built Santo Spirito at Florence, and left the model 



no BRUNELLESCHI 

beautifully made ; but it was spoilt in many parts after 
his death by presumptuous persons." 

These errors are more distinctly referred to in the 
Gaddi Codex, where it says : " The lines of the fa9ade 
which were intended to show the inner proportions were 
altered; the high altar was faced a difierent way to 
Brunelleschi's design. There was also an arch falsely 
placed, but the builders said it could not be other- 
wise ; besides this, the pilasters and capitals, etc., of the 
cupola were so much raised that it threw the cupola 
out of its true proportions, so that the building was 
weakened.^ 

Richat quotes the following extract from an old 
codex : 

"I record that on Thursday, May 23, 1454, at 
22 o'clock (about 6 p.m.), the first whole column was 
set up in the new church of Santo Spirito, the which 
... is the middle pillar next the chapel ; and I was 
present at the work, and therefore I record it with my 
own hand, I Bianco, son of Ghinozzi, son of Cancel- 
lieri, son of Dofifo, wool-merchant, of Via Maggio." 

Fabriczy (p. 200), finding little mention of the build- 
ing works between 1446 and 1456, takes this entry as 
a proof that the works were stopped for eight years 
after Brunelleschi's death. This might have been the 
case, though the entry taken alone would not prove it. 
It only proves that the walls with the half-columns and 
arches which form the chapels were built before the 
monolith columns — colonna d' unpezzo (all in one piece) — 
were placed in the nave. It may be interesting to study 

♦ For original text, see Fabriczy, p. 443. 
t " Delle Chiese," etc., tomo ix., p. 13. 




u 

Pi 

S 



o 

H 

<«; 

CO 

o 
u 

u 



0i$ 

2 



X 



From a print 

BRUNELLESCHI'S ORIGINAL DESIGN FOR THE FACADE OF THE CHURCH 
OF SANTO SPIRITO 



Plate XXIV 



AS CHURCH-BUILDER in 

the proportions of the church as given in Fabriczy; 
they seem to be peculiarly harmonious in the propor- 
tion of one part to another : 



Length of nave (without the 


Metres. 


Centimetres 


chapels at end) 


... 88 


9 (2881 


Length of transept 


... 50 


80 


Width of nave ... 


... 25 


40 


Width of transept 


... 12- 


70 


Depth of side-chapels 


2 


59 



Just at the back of Via dei Servi is a solid octagonal 
pile of building which many people mistake for a Roman 
ruin. It is known as the Castellaccio, but is nothing/ ^ 
more nor less than one of Filippo Brunelleschi's fines^ 
works which never got finished. It was to have been 
the Church of the Angioli, which he began for Matteo 
Scolari and his brother Filippo, better known as Pippo 
Spano; but now it encloses a mere circle of artists' 
studios, and a dwelling-house of peculiar plan, the 
rooms arranged round a circle. 

The Scolari were an ancient family connected with 
the Buondelmonti. They came in 1135 from Val di 
Greve into Florence, where they took sides with the 
Ghibellines. Matteo, who was a great soldier, died in 
1426, leaving his brothers, one of whom was Pippo 
Spano, the Captain of the forces to Sigismond, King 
of Hungary, the injunction to continue certain works 
begun by him, such as the monastery of S. Antonio at 
Tizzana, and that of the monastery of the Angioli in 
Florence. The Arte dei Mercanti somehow got the 
management of these affairs, and by some political 
jugglery reduced the two monasteries to one, reserving 



112 BRUNELLESCHI 

5,000 scudi for the building expenses, and handing over 
the rest to Pippo Spano and his brothers. 

In 1434 they obtained the site of a piece of ground 
near the monastery, and Filippo Brunelleschi was called 
as architect. His design, which Vasari calls bizzarris- 
simo (most fantastic), was decidedly unusual ; the ground- 
plan and elevation given in D'Agincourt (Plate L., Nos. 16 
and 17) show an internal octagon surrounded by eight 
clustered columns; behind these shafts stand massive 
piers, projecting from the walls, and forming arched 
chapels between them. The piers are so built that the 
external wall, instead of being octagonal, is a polygon 
of sixteen sides. The sides are externally divided by 
pilasters and surmounted by a fine cornice. 

From this, a nave and atrium, with two sacristies 
near the front entrance, were projected, but never 
finished. On this polygonal building a smaller upper 
story — an octagonal clerestory — was to have been 
erected, surmounted by a dome.* The clusters of 
columns are tall in proportion to the low curve of the 
arch ; they have in the design classically ornate capitals, 
surmounted by a plain abacus (Brunelleschi rarely made 
a colonnade without this addition). He had built the 
tribune up to the top of the pilasters, when one of the 
frequent wars broke out. Pippo Spano wanted his 
money for fighting, and the work was abandoned. 

Baldinuccit says that if this church had been 

* The design is not quite as new and original as it seemed to Vasari. 
The plan of Charlemagne's church at Aix-la-Chapelle is almost iden- 
tical — an octagon, in a polygon of sixteen sides. The church at 
Nimeguen, and the Baptistery of Bonn are similar, and all three have 
the octagon clerestory. 

t Moreni, "Due Vite," etc., p. 260. 




FACADE OF THE BADIA, FIESOLE 



Alinari photo 



Plate XXV 




Alinari photo 
SACRISTY DOORWAY, THE BADIA, FIESOLE 
Plate XXVI 



AS CHURCH-BUILDER 113 

finished it would have been one of the most beautiful, 
original, and noble works that Brunelleschi had ever 
designed. 

Brunelleschi was unfortunate in the architectural 
designs he made for Cosimo Pater Patriae, for he did 
not see the completion of either of them. The palace, 
as we shall show, was never built, Cosimo not wishing, 
like Luca Pitti, to offend his fellow-citizens by too 
great magnificence. The badia of Fiesole, which 
Vasari and tradition botji tell us was designed by him, 
was not finished till 1467, twenty-three years after 
Filippo's death. The contemporary biographer makes 
no mention of it, so it was probably not begun in his 
time, and Baldinucci also passes it over in silence. 
Gaye (" Carteggio," etc., vol. i., p. 550) quotes an entry 
in the archives from the Spogli degli Strozzi which 
fixes the date of its commencement as a.d. 1430 — 
" Convento e Chiesa di Fiesole, e di San Francesco al 
Monte si fabbricano" — so it is within the range of possi- 
bility that Brunelleschi began the building. The church 
of the badia has a venerable history ; it was the ancient 
cathedral of Fiesole, before the present one was built in 
1028, and contained the tomb of the martyr Bishop, 
S. Romulus. When the new cathedral was built on 
the hill, the Benedictines turned the old one into an 
abbey church, building a convent adjoining it. 

In 1439 it passed into the hands of the Augustine 
monks, the most aristocratic of the religious orders. 
Cosimo de' Medici was very intimate with them, and 
attended the sermons of their great preacher, Don 
Timoteo Maffei of Verona. He thought it would 
further his political aims to conciliate this powerful 
H 



114 BRUNELLESCHI 

Order, and for this he undertook to rebuild the church 
and convent, add a sacristy, and enlarge the cloisters, 
refectory, and library — an enterprise which the inscrip- 
tion tells us cost him 100,000 scudi. Of the mediaeval 
church nothing now remains but the ancient fagade of 
Roman style, similar to that of S. Miniato, a mosaic in 
marble, which Brunelleschi, with his usual reverence 
for the antique, left intact, sacrificing any idea of a 
fagade of his own, and merely leaving the brickwork of 
his enlargements like a frame around it (Plate XXV.). 
The church has several marks of his design in the 
general form, though the details point to a later time. 
The plan is strong and decided — few lines, but those 
pure and firm. It is in the form of a Latin cross, 
with deep transepts and a nave of four large arches. 
The chapels in the nave are so deep as to form a 
series of chambers with architectural fagades ; they are 
divided from each other by fluted Corinthian pilasters, 
supporting an architrave; but the pediments above 
are broken, in the affected style introduced by Miche- 
lozzi, a falsity which Brunelleschi would never have 
countenanced. There is over the centre of the cross 
a four-sided cupola slightly arched, supported on 
massive piers of fluted Corinthian style. 

The doors to the sacristies are very handsome, and 
suggest Brunelleschi's own design. As he loved a high 
abacus over the capital of his columns, so here . he has 
placed a stilted architrave — in fact, a double one between 
the door and the pediment (Plate XXVI.). The Renais- 
sance decorations of this are of clean-cut, decided lines. 
The roof is waggon vaulted. 

The parts which most suggest Brunelleschi's hand 




CLOISTER OF THE BADIA, FIESOLE 



Alinari photo 



Platk XXVII 




Alinari^hoio 

CAPITAL OF A COLUMN IN THE EXTERNAL LOGGIA OF THE BADIA, 

FIESOLE 



Plate XXVIII 



AS CHURCH-BUILDER 115 

are the cloisters and the outer loggia, which are both 
perfectly charming. The cloister is a two-storied arcade 
of five arches on two sides, and seyen on the other two 
(Plate XXVn.). The capitals of the slight and elegant 
columns are of peculiar design. They are fluted capitals, 1 
with acanthus leaves springing from above the lonjc I 
volutes at the corners, and curving gracefully down- I 
wards. " The outer loggia, which has also two colon- 
nades one over the other, and commands a glorious 
view of Florence and Val d' Arno, is a dream of archi- 
tectural beauty (Plate XXVHL). The lower row of 
composite columns of varied design, from which the 
arches spring direct, is light and graceful ; the upper 
row of pillars supports the ancient roof-beam, and each 
pillar is surmounted by a boldly carved wooden bracket 
spreading on each side to support the beam. The 
effect is rich in the extreme (Plate XXIX.). 

The refectory is a fine square room with groined roof, 
and a pulpit carved in white marble, which is said to 
have been designed by Brunelleschi. It projects from 
the wall, and is surrounded by cherubs and wreaths of 
foliage in correct Renaissance style ; the pointed base 
is sculptured down to the very point in lentil scrolls 
and wreaths of bay and acanthus. The style would 
seem rather later than Brunelleschi, and it may have 
been by Desiderio di Settignano, who sculptured the 
lavabo in the adjoining anteroom. 

As a historical building the badia is very interesting. 
Lorenzo il Magnifico sometimes held his Plato Academy 
here. Giovanni, afterwards Leo X., took the purple 
here as Cardinal; and his brother Giuliano, Duke of 
Nemours, died in the convent. In later days Father 
H 2 



ii6 BRUNELLESCHI 

Inghirami established here his printing-press, in which 
the first good map of Tuscany was printed. 

The badia is now a college for boys. The Spanish 
army greatly damaged it in 1529, and two or three 
subsequent restorations (?) have rendered it still more 
difficult to decide Brunelleschi's share in the building. 



CHAPTER XI 

BRUNELLESCHI AS A PALACE-BUILDER 

In domestic architecture, as distinctly as in his churches, 
Brunelleschi led the way to the new style. The Barbadori 
and the Pazzi families, for whom he had built chapels, 
employed him to design their houses, and ere long the 
merchant princes, like Cosimo de' Medici and Luca 
Pitti, followed their example. 

In some designs he kept to the traditional marks of 
the old Florentine fortress palace, only giving a new 
touch and added beauty to antique forms ; in others he 
boldly went to the classical style, and did away entirely 
with the double-arched Lombard window and the pillared 
cortile. In either case his three great works — ^the Pitti, 
the Pazzi, and the Barbadori palaces — may be looked 
on as links between the older and heavier Tuscan forms, 
and the elegant architecture of the sei-cento style. 

One of the best specimens of the Tuscan form is the 
Palazzo Busini, afterwards Quaratesi, on Piazza Ognis- 
santi (Plate XXX.). This is, I think, the only one in 
which Brunelleschi has kept up the ancient mark of 




From a print by Zocchi 

PALAZZO BUSINI, NOW QUARATESI, FLORENCE, AS IT WAS IN THE 
SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 



Plate XXX 



AS A PALACE-BUILDER 117 

nobility — the sporti — i.e., the upper story projecting on 
brackets. In the Middle Ages only families of noble 
rank were allowed sporti. As Brunelleschi heralded in 
the new architecture, he claims also the last instance 
of the old, for I remember no later palace built with 
sporti. He added a grace to it, however, by the 
decorations in sgraffito^* which gave a touch of art to 
the whole, and were done by Andrea Feltrini, pupil of 
Cosimo Rosselli. We have given our illustration from 
Zocchi's book, as being more nearly the form Brunel- 
leschi gave it than the plate-glass innovation of the 
art-shop there at present ; but the upper windows had 
even at that time already been altered. We must do 
the present possessor, Sig. Pisani, the justice to admit 
that except for the plate-glass in the basement, and 
the Persian blinds above, he has now made a very 
fair restoration of the house. The sgraffiti are copied 
from the remains of Andrea Feltrini's own, and seem 
to prove that Brunelleschi in part suggested the 
design. They imitate Corinthian pilasters between each 
of the arched windows, and a decorative frieze above 
them, along the whole front. The small arches formed 
by the brackets on the side towards the street arc 
adorned with very classic scrolls, and filled beneath 
with a box and rose pattern that suggests the ceiling 
of the arch of Titus. 
The interior of the house — also restored on the old 

* Sgraffito, or scratch-work, was one of the chief forms of external 
house decoration in the fifteenth century. A black layer of plaster 
had a white layer superimposed ; the design, usually very artistic and 
elegant, was ^awn on the white, and the ground- work scratched off, so 
as to leave the design in white on a black ground. 



ii8 BRUNELLESCHI 

lines — gives a better example of Brunelleschi's idea of 
a palace-house than any of his others which have been 
more changed. The entrance-hall, with its vaulted roof, 
is flanked by pilasters, in the form of Corinthian half- 
columns ; the doors and internal windows have moulded 
borders. The staircase is of similar construction to 
those of the Pazzi and Barbadori houses — i.e., a 
succession of sloping but lofty tunnels, each finished 
with a moulded arch, and lighted from windows on 
the landings between each flight. On the first landing 
a fine column finishes the dividing wall between the 
two flights of steps, and supports the central arch of 
the vaulting. The smaller half-vaults rest on carved 
brackets of the same classic style, and the side-walls 
are panelled in stone. 

The rooms, which are many and large, are disposed 
in a continuous suite, round three sides of a square, 
and are of the most noble and satisfying proportions. 
One or two were in the sixteenth century ceiled and 
frescoed by Poccetti ; but most of them are left with 
the old Brunelleschi timbered roofs, whose beams and 
cross-beams are painted and diapered in colour. The 
tall arched windows placed rather high have each a 
convenient dais of fanciful semicircular design, the 
upper step curved inwards in the centre, the under 
outwards. Brunelleschi was always practical, and in 
all his palaces he thought of the comfort of the 
Florentine maidens, who liked to look out from their 
windows on the world below. 

The Barbadori window platforms are wide and 
spacious and square in form; but whatever shape he 
made them, he kept a complete harmony in the whole 




Brogi photo 



THE VILLA REALE DELLA PETRAJA 



Near Florence 



Plate XXXI 



AS A PALACE-BUILDER 1 19 

design, never mixing his forms or spoiling the insieme 
of his design by confused details. The tall arched 
windows are now filled with plate-glass, but originally 
they would have been double-light windows like those 
of the Pazzi and Pitti palaces. 

One of the first works of house architecture mentioned 
by Manetti and Baldinucci* was either the restoration 
or rebuilding of the tower of the villa at Petraja, now 
one of the royal villas (Plate XXXI.). This is peculiarly 
interesting, for Petraja was, or had been, one of the 
hereditary possessions of the Brunelleschi family. We 
gather this from an interesting story about some valorous 
relatives of Lippo Brunelleschi in Ammannati,t which 
is quoted by Baldinucci. 

In those days, a.d. 1364, the family were the pos- 
sessors of the villa at Petraja, now the Royal Villa. 
Some enemies of their faction, wishing to take the villa 
by force, persuaded the English and German mercenaries 
then in Florence to besiege it. The sons of Boccaccio 
Brunelleschi defended it with such spirit that in the 
first assault the English, in spite of scaling-ladders and 
balestrcy were repulsed with great loss. The German 
troops next assaulted it ferociously, with the same results. 
Then the two forces joined and made a third assault, 
which, to the glory of the Brunelleschi, was equally 
repulsed. Ammannati believes that the present tower 
of this villa is the same turret from which these brave 
Brunelleschi fought, and that the authors who assert 
that Filippo was the architect have confused his name 
with that of the possessors, though he agrees that it 

* Moreni, " Due Vite," pp. 168, 169, and 295. 

+ Ammannati, " Storia Fiorentina/' lib. xii., p. 639. 



I20 BRUNELLESCHI 

might have been restored by him later. The villa itself 
has been rebuilt by the Medicean Dukes, but the old 
tower was left untouched. 

We now come to our architect's masterpiece of 
domestic architecture — the Palazzo Quaratesi or Pazzi. 

Many years before the Pazzi conspiracy was hatched, 
Andrea Pazzi had caused Brunelleschi to make him a 
plan for a new palace at the corner of Via del Procon- 
solo and Borgo degli Albizzi.* On Andrea's death in 
1446 his son Jacopo continued the building. It is 
believed that Brunelleschi began it ; but he died almost 
at the same time as Messer Andrea Pazzi, and it was 
finished, and probably enlarged, by Giuliano da Majano 
from Filippo's plans, while keeping up the same style 
(Plate XXXIL). Jodoco del Badiat quotes Politian's 
words to this effect. Writing of Jacopo dei Pazzi, he 
says, *' Domum paternam magnifice extructam a funda- 
mentis diruit ; novam exaedificare adgressus est." The 
books of the Catasta prove that in 1462 Jacopo had 
bought another house next to his in Via del Proconsolo, 
which was incorporated with the new building. This 
would be the portion occupied by the last window in 
Via del Proconsolo; but, from the completeness and 

* In the "Portata al Catasto" di Jacopo Pazzi, 1446 (Quartiere 
S. Giovanni, Confalone Chiavi, t. 682, p. 908), it is described in quaint 
Italian as " a house with its appurtenances in which Messer Andrea 
lived, and in which I live at present with my family, situated at the 
Canto dei Pazzi, in the parish of San Broccolo . . . (sic)" [St. Proculus]. 
Here follow its boundaries. ' ' It formerly had a shop underneath it, bat 
in 1432 this was made into a ground-floor apartment as you see at 
present" — i.e., 1446. See Fabriczy, p. 327, note. 

t " Raccolta delle Migliori Fabbriche antiche e modeme di Firenze," 
part i., p. 8. 




Alinariphoto 
PALAZZO PAZZI, NOW QUARATESI, FLORENCE 



Plate XXXH 




Brogi photo 



WINDOW IN THE PALAZZO PAZZI, FLORENCE 
Plate XXXIII 



AS A PALACE-BUILDER 121 

symmetry of the design of this fa9ade, the plan must 
have been originally made to include this portion ; there 
is no sign of an afterthought. Probably Messer Jacopo 
had the intention of purchasing that house long before 
he was able to fulfil it. 

In this Brunelleschi followed out the Tuscan style 
rather than the classic, which he had not yet begun to 
use for private houses. It is one of the most beautiful 
of its kind. The upper stories are light and elegant, ^ 
and make a beautiful contrast to the solid rustic masonry , 
of the base. The cornices are rich and effective. Brunel- 
leschi has given his own style to the Lombard double- 
arched windows (Plate XXXIIL). Instead of the low, 
squat, arched orifice, with its solid blocks of stone, he 
has a taller and more graceful simple arch, enriched 
with artistic mouldings. In place of the two short 
arches of olden times, Brunelleschi has filled his ornate 
window openings with a taller central pillar and a 
graceful sculpture in the spandrel. 

The cortile — that important partof a Tuscan palace — 
is very elegant; it has on three sides of it arcades 
(now partly built in) on pillars with composite capitals 
(Plate XXXIV.). The capitals, too, are a tribute to 
the older schools, having quite a Lombard touch in 
their fanciful foliage and volutes, with which the Pazzi 
arms are intermingled. The dolphins are cleverly utilized 
as the drooping corner volutes, and in the spandrels of 
the arches are circular niches surrounded by the same 
garlands of poppies or stones as those between the 
window arches. The crescent-shaped sail is beneath 
them. It would be interesting to know whether 
Brunelleschi drew the designs for his varied capitals. 



122 BRUNELLESCHI 

or whether he followed the old usages of the guild, 
leaving the minor sculptural details to the masters of 
the Opera whom he employed for the different parts. 

As in all Brunelleschi's designs, the arches of both 
doors and windows in this palace are of proportions 
particularly harmonious. The inner arch of the door 
is i6 feet ii inches high, the width being as nearly as 
possible half the height. The central arches of the 
cortile are in height two and a quarter times their 
width, while the height of the windows is one and a 
third that of their width. The ornamentation of the 
whole building is beautiful. The arches of the windows, 
which are 9 feet high, have sculptured scrolls of 
branches and berries forming a rich course between 
the mouldings ; the capitals of the colonnettes which 
divide the two lights are ornate, and in the spandrels 
are large roses, surrounded by an ornate circlet, 
formed of poppy-heads bound together by a band. 
This is in allusion to the Bartolini-Salimbene, whose 
palace was on the site before Jacopo Pazzi built the 
present one.* Three other figures surround the wreath ; 
at a distance they look like crescents, and suggest the 
arms of the older branch of the Pazzi family, eight 
half-moons arranged in a certain figure. They are, 
however, sails swelling in a wind; the cross-bar and 
cordage being quite distinguishable. They represent 

* The emblematic badge of the Bartolini family was the poppy, with 
the contradictory motto, " Per non dormire." Both poppies and motto 
may be seen in the sculptured decorations of the Bartolini palace, now 
H6tel du Nord, on Piazza Santa Triniti. There is, however, a 
diversity of opinion as to these wreaths. Some say they represent not 
poppies, but the fire-stones brought from Jerusalem by the ancestor of 
the Pazzi who fought in the Crusades. 




I 



AS A PALACE-BUILDER 123 

the sail of fortune, and were an emblem much used by 
merchant -princes of Florence in the fourteenth and 
fifteenth centuries. The Rucellai palace in the Vigna 
Nuova has a whole frieze formed of these sails.* 

Donatello has set his seal to his friend's work in a 
little Madonna in a shrine on the corner of the base- 
ment. 

A building of another stamp which Florence owes 
in part to Brunelleschi is the mighty pile of the 
Pitti palace (Plate XXXV.). The commission for the 
design was given by Luca Pitti, in 1440, when Brunel- 
leschi was sixty-three years of age. At that time the 
Pitti family had risen to great eminence in the city, and 
Luca — who had been Gonfaloniere, and was a great 
friend of Cosimo Pater Patriae, who knighted him — 
wished to build a palace which should eclipse all others. 

Vasari's story that Luca Pitti taunted Filippo Strozzi 
with the boast that his palace would be big enough to 
contain the Strozzi one in its courtyard was, of course, 
although literally fulfilled, a mere invention. The 
Strozzi palace was not begun till nearly fifty years after 
the Pitti. 

Luca's other boast to Cosimo dei Medici, that " his 

* Dr. Warburg, a member of the Konsthistorisches Institut, has 
made a study of these heraldic emblems, and finds an mterpretation 
of the sail of fortune in an old print in the Bandelli collection at the 
Uffizi. It represents a ship with a maiden in the prow, and a youth 
holding up the sail — precisely the group that forms the upper part of 
the Rucellai heraldic shield. The motto is, *' I mi laso portare alia 
fortuna sperando alfin daver buona ventura." Dr. Warburg thinks 
that the sails on the Pazzi palace indicate some matrimonial relation- 
ship with the Rucellai family. The present Pazzi arms are on a shield 
at the comer of the house, and consist of two dolphins erect with five 
crosses of the field. 



124 BRUNELLESCHI 

windows should be larger than Cosimo's great doorway," 
is much more probable, for Brunelleschi, whose plan for 
the Medici house had been rejected on account of its 
extreme size and grandeur, would have had a pleasure 
in outvying his rival Michelozzo. To build his palace, 
Luca Pitti purchased from a certain Monna Bandecca 
a house and vineyard, which had belonged to her 
brother, Roberto di' Rossi.* It was near a piece of 
ground called Bogoli, now the Boboli gardens, and he 
gave 450 florins for it.t Brunelleschi made the plan, 
and Luca Fancelli is said by Vasari to have under- 
taken the surveillance of the work. This seems a little 
impossible, unless the work were begun many years 
after Brunelleschi's death. Luca Fancelli, was born in 
1430,1 and would have been only ten years old at this 
time. His father was Jacopo di Bartolommeo di Set- 
tignano. Luca was at Mantua more than thirty 
years, in the service of Duke Francesco Gonzaga, and 
after that he was employed at Milan and Venice. It 
was not till 1491 that he returned to Florence, and 
became head-architect of the Duomo, in place of 
Giuliano di Majano. He died in 1494. 

As in another place Vasari calls Fancelli Silvestro, 
and not Luca, I can only imagine that there were two 
Fancelli in Florence, and that the elder one worked 
under Brunelleschi. 

It is, however, almost certain that the first plan was 

* The Rossi were a large and powerful family who owned many 
houses on the further side of the Ponte Vecchio. 

f *' Cronaca di Buonaccorso Pitti." Firenze, Manni, 1720. 

} See note to "Life of Leon Battista Alberti " in Milanesi's 
Vasari. 



AS A PALACE-BUILDER 125 

Brunelleschi's. It was a costly work for Luca Pitti; 
not only had he to give indemnities to several families 
whose houses were bought to enlarge the site, but to 
bribe people to supply him with materials and labourers. . 
The Florentines, who resen ted pretensio n, declared that 
Luca was ruining hFrnself with his greatEbuse. To put 
a stop to these envious stories, Messer Pitti invited 
a hundred of the principal citizens to a banquet, and 
placed each of them to sit at table on a sack of scudi. 

Before the death of Filippo, the walls were built to the 
second story, and his design was already visible. In 
his frontage he satisfied his employer's love of the 
magnificent by a gigantic simplicity of line and grand 
solidity of structure. It has been styled Doric by many 
writers, but, except that its massive masonry recalls the 
Doric of remote ages before the Greeks had refined it, 
the term hardly applies. There is, in fact, nothmg 
classical in the frontage even now, except the Renais- 
sance pediments of the basement windows, which were 
interpolated in Brunelleschi's solid arches by a later 
architect, and are a little incongruous to the general 
design. The upper stories now display a long succes- 
sion of arched windows, hideously filled in with bricks 
and squares of glass; above the cornices of simple 
moulding run three long lines of balcony, with a balus- 
trade of small columns. In the building as it stands 
now, there is a great want of balance. The immense ^V • v 
length, in proportion to its height, has disastrously C ^' 
exaggerated the horizontal lines. 

But this is not at all due to Filippo Brunelleschi, 
whose original design was compact and well propor- 
tioned. His fagade consisted of seven large arched 



126 BRUNELLESCHI 

windows, on each of the upper floors, with the balus- 
trades and masonry as at present. Beneath the roof 
was an open pillared loggia. 

His arched windows, however, were intended to be 
filled with smaller double arches as in the Palazzo 
Pazzi. His basement consisted of three gigantic door- 
ways, and four small barred windows, which were all 
that were possible for purposes of safety in those dis- 
turbed times. The great cortile, the largest in Florence, 
with its terrace on one side, was Brunelleschi's, though 
Ammannati added something even to this. The credit 
of discovering just the part Brunelleschi had in this 
palace — viz., the three central arches of the basement 
and the seven windows above them — is due to Professor 
Cosimo Conti, who proves his assertion from an ancient 
plan in the Uffizi; and from two pictures — one an 
altar-piece by Alessandro AUori, in the Church of Santo 
Spirito, and another the portrait of a lady, probably 
one of the Pitti family, in which the palace forms the 
background, as seen through an open window. This 
portrait was at one time in the passage leading^from the 
Uffizi to the Pitti. Being led by these pictures to 
enquire into the subject, Professor Conti found that the 
architecture of the palace itself confirmed his view. 
The masonry of the small square openings on the two 
outer ends of the basement is different from that of 
Brunelleschi's four little windows, where the architrave 
is in three bosses, while the others on each side are 
plain slabs of stone. Again, the iron torch-holders in 
the central part are differently worked from the others ; 
these have on the torch-ring a shield wavy — the arms of 
the Pitti — while the side ones have a different device. 




> 

X 
X 
X 



AS A PALACE-BUILDER 127 

Further researches in the interior of the palace entirely 
confirmed Professor Conti's theory, especially his 
assertion that the three great arches in the basement 
were originally all doors, and not filled in with windows 
as at present. The rooms between the doors had 
arched vaulting ; the two rooms which have been closed 
in by bricking up the doorways have waggon vaulted 
roofs, like that of the principal entrance, and the iron 
staples for the hinges of the doors are stilj visible.* 

Anyone who wished to know what the Pitti palace 
was as designed by Brunelleschi can form a good idea 
by looking at the Palazzo Strozzino at the back of the 
great Strozzi palace, in which Michelozzi appears to 
have been greatly influenced by Brunelleschi. 

The garden front shows greater diversity (Plate 
XXXVL). Two wings are thrown out on each side, 
forming the central court, a wide pillared balcony joins 
them, and an elegant fountain rises in the midst. The 
architecture is of the same massive style as the front, 
the windows being divided by alternate half-columns, 
the capitals of which are Doric in the basement, Ionic 
on the first floor, and Corinthian on the second. The 
columns and pilasters are seemingly formed of alternate 
larger and smaller blocks of stone, which give them 
a rugged ribbed appearance. There is a very interesting 
view of the garden front of Palazzo Pitti on a goblet 
of glass, once belonging to the Pitti Palace, now in 
the possession of the writer, which was engraved by 
Jacques Callot, the French engraver (born 1593, died 
1636), who was for some time at the Court of Cosimo 11. 

* See a pamphlet, "11 Palazzo Pitti," by Professor Cosimo Conti, 
who read it at a meeting of the Colombaria Society in March, 1887. 



/ 



V 



128 BRUNELLESCHI 

An ancient label in the case records that it was com- 
missioned by the Duke Piero (Nothus), grandson of 
Cosimo II., whose well-known dwarf is seen standing on 
the terrace. It gives the centre of the palace, but not 
the wings, and includes the first terrace and fountain, 
but not the second higher one, which must have been 
a later addition. The two wings with terraces on the 
front facing the Piazza Pitti were added later from 
Ammannati's designs. It is said that Brunelleschi's 
plans were lost by that time, but this is not confirmed. 
In the face of so much superimposed work, we dare 
not echo Burckhardt's apostrophe : " So stands Brunel- 
leschi's creation, the grand primitive example of a 
Florentine Renaissance palace, as a mighty house which 
impresses little and great alike.*' 

Notwithstanding Luca Pitti's display of gold, the 
hundred sacks all collapsed before the work was finished. 
Duke Cosimo afterwards purchased the palace for his 
Spanish wife, Eleonora of Toledo, for whom the gardens 
of Boboli were enlarged and decorated, all the sculptors 
of Cosimo's time being called in to provide fountains 
and statues. The one in the court of the garden front, 
shown in our illustration, was the work of Ammannati. 
In the interior the design is grand and spacious. 
The large halls and chambers are all vaulted and 
frescoed. The doorways are sculptured in pure Sera- 
vezza marble. 

This palace was not the only commission which 
Brunelleschi received from Luca Pitti. He designed 
his villa at Rusciano, as well as his city palace. This 
noble villa stands on an elevation outside the San 
Niccol6 gate, and its fine pleasure-grounds extend over 



AS A PALACE-BUILDER 129 

the whole eminence.* Villa Pitti was a much earlier 
work than the palace, and is utterly different in style, 
being of very irregular form, full of wings and " loggie" 
and projections. Centuries of alterations and repairs 
have so masked the original plan that it is quite impos- 
sible to say how much of Brunelleschi's design is now 
recognisable. The older windows, of which there are 
one or two left, show that he used the fourteenth- 
century form, with the projecting eaves on brackets 
above, and the bracket - supported tnensola below. 
There is a fine courtyard with columns and arches, 
and a peculiarly light and airy colonnade as a porch 
over the door. The peculiarity of this is, that the door 
is not in the centre of it, but on one side, so that when 
a carriage stands in front of the door for people to 
enter it, the horses are well protected. It is just such 
a bit of practicality as Brunelleschi would have delighted 
in, but it is most probably a quite modern addition. 

Luca Pitti must have had the idea of building this 
villa as early as 1427, when the Portata al Catasto 
(tax record) for the Quartiere Santo Spirito notes 
that Luca Pitti is taxed on a vineyard with a house and 
peasant dwellings, in a place called Rusciano, in the 
parish of San Miniato, which property he had bought 
from Pier Antonio di Venanzo di Camerino, together 
with a house then used as a tavern. The same pro- 
perty is taxed in 1433 and 1457, and, of course, during 
the intermediate years. The Pitti family did not long 
enjoy their villa, for when the crash came in 1480, and 
their property had to be sold, we find it all detailed as 

* It is now in the possession of Baron Stumm. H.I.H. the Empress 
Frederick of Prussia stayed there when in Florence. 

I 



I30 BRUNELLESCHI 

bent alienati (alienated property) by the sons of Luca, 
who sold it to the Count of Urbino. 

The same family Barbadori, for whom Filippo built 
the chapel in Santa Feliciti, afterwards employed him 
to build their house in Borgo San Jacopo. This palace 
stands on the left entering from the Ponte Vecchio. It 
was a difl&cult design to make, owing to the curve of 
the street at that point, but Brunelleschi succeeded so 
well that the slight outward bend of the walls appears 
only to add to the effect. There was so much difl&culty 
and arbitration in arranging with others, who had poor- 
looking buildings on the site, that the Barbadori palace 
was for many years left unfinished. Manetti says that 
the owner failed and lost his patrimony. In this build- 
ing Brunelleschi quite left the old Florentine style which 
he modified in Palazzo Pazzi, and boldly adopted the 
Roman revival; the windows instead of the old bracket 
and mensola, or the double arch, are square, and have 
the triangular pediment. He also omitted the pillared 
cortile, which is such a mark of the Tuscan palace, and 
was content with a mere yard for purposes of light to 
the upper internal windows. 



CHAPTER XII 

BRUNELLESCHI AS A MILITARY ENGINEER 

Brunelleschi's science had nothing narrow about 
it ; as far as the art of building could go, he was past- 
master of it in every branch. We have seen him lead" 



AS A MILITARY ENGINEER 131 

ing his own and future ages in ecclesiastical and civil 
architecture ; we shall now see him following the \ 
ancients in military architecture. Here, instead of \ 
being a pioneer, we might almost look on him as the ( 
last of the fortress-builders, for, besides the Fortezza at / 
Florence, built by San Gallo for Cosimo, and the 
fortification of Leghorn by Sir Robert Dudley, very / 
few great fortresses were erected in Tuscany after \ 
this era. ^ 

In the fifteentl) century Pisa was in the possession 
of Florence, and it was thought necessary to strengthen 
its fortifications. Brunelleschi was called to Pisa first 
on August 16, 1426, by the six ufficiali del mare (officers 
of the marine), to consult as to the best method of 
fortifying the city. The subject had been mooted in 
the civic councils on May 29, 1425, when a vote was 
passed **pro reparatione frontis ad mare civitatis 
Pisarum qui dicitur el ponte a mare."* 

It was decided to erect towers on each side of the 
bridge over the Arno, nearest the sea. This bridge 
had been built in 1331, and now, a century later, 
threatened collapse. Brunelleschi strengthened the 
pilasters from which the five arches spring. One of 
these arches is much larger than the others, for the con- 
venience of the galleys and vessels which had to pass 
out to sea through it. Morronat thinks that there was 
originally a drawbridge over this part of the bridge. 
Filippo's towers are said to have been very well adapted 
to the defences required in those times, and furnished 
with many ingenious devices. They are now no longer 

* Gaye, "Carteggio," etc., vol. i., p. 545. 
t "Pisa lUustrata," vol. iii., p. 358. 
I 2 



132 BRUNELLESCHI 

entire, being partly demolished, and partly built into 
houses. The old Guelph Tower, as it is called, with its 
gallery on brackets, forming a cornice beneath the 
battlements in good old mediaeval fashion, is probably 
no part of his work, as it is in a style long before his 
time. 

On September 12 of this same year 1426, Filippo 
and the chief master Battista were desired to fix the 
price of wages for the builders who were to work at the 
Castle of Lastra. This fort stood above Signa, and 
guarded the valley of the Arno. Besides the castle at 
Lastra, a little village near it, named Malmantile, was 
turned into a fortress by being strongly walled all round. 
It still exists, and is, in these days, a unique instance 
of a walled village. These works of fortification were 
begun in 1424, when, on September 26, the Opera del 
Duomo decided to provide for the expense of them* 
(Plate XLL). 

This same year the Meat Office (Offitialium Carnium) 
obtained leave from the Opera of the Duomo for 
Brunelleschi to leave Florence on some business for 
them. Its precise nature is not specified beyond the 
words facto carnesprivio, but he was absent on account 
of it for four days in September, 1426, and ten days in 
the February foUowing.t 

In June, 1435, he again went to Pisa, to begin the 
fortification above the Porta del Parlascio, but it is not 
clear how much he did here. It does not appear that 
he rebuilt the gateway, which was a very ancient one, 
but only restored and fortified it. 

* See Gaye, " Carteggio," etc., vol. i., p. 550. 
t Guasti, **La Cupola," p. 51. 




Privatt photos 

1. GATEWAY AT LASTRA 

2. PART OF FORTRESS AT MALMANTILE 
Plate XLl 



AS A MILITARY ENGINEER 133 

One of Filippo's Pisan fortifications was that of Vico 
Pisano, a town which had been a frontier of Pisa, and 
twice repulsed Castruccio Castracane, in 1323 and 1327. 
The Florentines took it in July, 1406, after a siege of 
some months, and in due time Brunelleschi was em- 
ployed by the Commune to restore the fortress and 
build a wall round the town. Mons. Giovio (Hist., 
lib. iii., p. 57) describes Vico as standing on a rugged 
peninsula formed by a curve of the Arno, above an 
immense green plain, which was used for equestrian com- 
bats, and says a fine square tower stands in front of the 
town, from which a wall of many bastions and ramparts 
entirely encircles it. From the Spogli Strozzi (serie ii., 
t. 78), under date 1435, we find the following entry: 
" The operai of Santa Maria del Fiore are to go to Vico 
Pisano to see, order, and fix where the fortress should 
be placed ;" and Gaye (vol. i., p. 553) quotes firom the 
books of the provveditore that "five citizens are de- 
puted to have the citadel built at Vico Pisano." This 
is dated July 29, 1435. Of course Brunelleschi was at 
the head of them all. The works must have continued 
some years, for another entry quoted by Fabriczy, from 
the Spogli Strozzi, records under the date 1440, which 
Fabriczy (p. 380, note) thinks a false date, "that Filippo 
di Ser Brunelleschi is ordered to go to Vico Pisano to 
inspect a certain wall in the fortress which is ruined, 
and to provide for the necessary repairs (Plate XL.). 

Brunelleschi's visit to Lucca was less redundant to 
his glory. The Florentines were at the time at war 
with Lucca, and the Council of Ten, not being able to 
take the city by arms, formed a wild project to flood it, 
by letting in the water of the Serchio on it. Brunei- 



134 BRUNELLESCHI 

leschi, who always had a scheme for every great work 
proposed, formed a plan for doing this which he said 
could not fail. The Dieci di Balia on March 2, i4f|^, 
wrote to Rinaldo degli Albizzi that they "sent Pippo di 
Ser Brunellesco to inspect the walls of Lucca, and execute 
a certain idea and design he had formed, and which they 
thought would assist the emprise, and redound to the 
favour of the commune." They enjoin on the General 
to treat him with honour as a most singular and cap- 
able man. A letter from Rinaldo degli Albizzi shows 
how he followed this injunction; he says: "Pippo di 
Ser Brunellesco has been here and has made his design. 
This morning he breakfasted with me, and then went 
back there" — ue., to Florence. On his return to Lucca, 
he was accompanied by other master builders, and a 
company of gtMstatori (sappers and miners) was placed 
at his disposal. 

The Lucchesi, under their leader Paolo Guinigi, Lord 
of Lucca, anxiously watched the engineering works of 
the besiegers in the plain, and the growth of the canals 
which were rapidly nearing the city, and were destined 
to bring the great flood of the Serchio pouring in at their 
gates. Pablo Guinigi, however, was a man of resources. 
He said that many towns were belted with moats of water, 
and were only the more strong for it ; their walls and 
ramparts were high and strong — the only danger lay in 
the situation of Porta Ponzano, and this must be so de- 
fended that the Florentines could not work there. He 
sent numbers of peasants out at night with orders to 
secretly dig a greatnumber of trenches, as deep as a man's 
height, and large enough to hold two archers in each. 
This was promptly done and the trenches were manned, 




FORTIFICATIONS OF VICO PISANO 



Private photos 



Plate XL 



AS A MILITARY ENGINEER 135 

so that when the Florentines came within bowshot 
they were amazed at a flight of arrows rising apparently 
from the earth- These invisible foes effectually stopped 
the engineering works, and when, instead of flooding 
Lucca, the Serchio overflowed into the camp of the 
besiegers, the Florentines withdrew ignominiously. 
Ammirato, t. ii,, part i., p. 1061, says : " It was 
necessary to raise the camp, to the great mortification 
of those who had proposed the scheme, especially of 
Brunelleschi, against whom the Florentines, forgetting 
that they had before lauded him to the skies, made 
a satirical song, ridiculing his foolish artifice. Even 
the children sang it in the streets, and it so outweighed 
his former glory that his very soul was embittered." 
This disastrous enterprise was shared by Michelozzi 
and Donatello. 

The "Deliberations of the Ten of War" have entries 
dated April 29, 1430, and June 14, 1430, recording pay- 
ments to all these three for their engineering work in 
the camp against Lucca. In April Michelozzi received 
33 florins, and Brunelleschi_[ 60 ; in June Brunelleschi 
210, and Michelozzi and Donatello 20 florins.* 

Muratori, not mentioning the archers, only sayst 
that Paolo Guinigi had his trenches so dug that, 
instead of sending the Serchio into Lucca, it flowed 
into the Florentine camp and flooded it. This turning 
of the tables on the Florentines would far better account 
for their mortification and the ridicule heaped on poor 
Filippo than a few arrows which they might have re- 
taliated. 

* For fall account see Gaye, *• Carteggio," etc., vol. i., pp. 25, 26. 
t ** Annali d' Italia," tome ix., p. 139. 



136 BRUNELLESCHI 

In 1431 we find our architect building other fortifica- 
tions at Staggia in the Romagna, and at Rencine in 
the valley of Chianti. Gaye (p. 551) records the delibe- 
ration of the Opera of S. Maria del Fiore to " fortify 
and build castles, forts, and walls at Staggia and 
Rencine." The " Spogli Strozzi," vol, xx., fol. 70, 
T431, quoted by Fabriczy, p. 359, provides us with the 
name of the architect. " Filippo di Ser Brunellesco 
with a companion and two horses is to go to the castles 
of Rencine and Staggia and arrange about the fortifica- 
tions of those places." All these old fortresses are more 
or less ruinous and defaced now. Most of them are 
turned into dwelling-houses for the poor. The castle 
at Staggia is perhaps the best preserved. 

On April 2, 1432, Filippo was accorded leave for one 
month and fifteen days to go to Mantua and to Ferrara 
to execute some commissions for the Princes of both 
places. But the Opera strongly expressed its need for 
Filippo's return at the end of that time. In April, 
1436, he again made the same round, but was only 
allowed twenty days for both cities. I can find no 
account of the work he did at these visits for either 
Prince, but it is supposed to have been something con- 
nected with the fortifications. His touch seems especi- 
ally visible in the part of Castel S. Giorgio with the 
pilasters (Plate XXXIX.). Baldinucci* speaks of a 
later call to Mantua in 1445. He records that when 
the first marble of the lantern of the Florentine 
Cathedral was blessed by the Archbishop, the Marchese 
Ludovico Gonzaga, who was present, made urgent 
appeal to the Signoria that Brunelleschi might be spared 
* Moreni, *• Due Vite," p. 278. 




"i 



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H 
< 



O 



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o 
u 

X 
H 



X 
X 



AS A MILITARY ENGINEER 137 

to go to him, to make models of some buildings and to 
provide some remedy against the overflowing of the 
river Po. In all these things Filippo satisfied the 
Marquis so well that he overwhelmed the great architect 
with favours before he allowed him to leave Mantua. 
Possibly the remarkable moats which surround Mantua 
were part of his work. 

In regard to his visits to Milan the case is the 
opposite. We have a more distinct mention by his 
biographers, but no direct confirmation in the archives. 
The first visit was when the loggia of the Florentine 
Foundling Hospital was already in progress, and on 
leaving Florence he placed the superintendence of that 
colonnade in the care of Francesco della Luna, his 
pupil. This is indirectly confirmed by the books of 
the Foundling Hospital in the State Archives, where 
della Luna is chronicled as operaio for the year 1427. 

The second visit, which Baldinucci says took place in 
1434, is also confirmed in the same books by della Luna 
being again in authority as master-builder in that year. 
On his first visit to Milan, Brunelleschi made the design 
of a fortress for Duke Filippo Maria Visconti. This 
design was probably only for the rebuilding of a portion 
of the fortifications originally begun under Galeazzo II. 
in 1358 and 1368. During the century following that 
date the Visconti family experienced many vicissitudes, 
and either the fortress remained unfinished or had fallen 
into disuse and partial ruin. 

It is said that Filippo Maria lived the life of a recluse 
in that building for thirty years ; if so, it could not have 
been in the part that Brunelleschi built, for Duke Filippo 
Maria died in 1437. It appears that he had during his 



138 BRUNELLESCHI 

seclusion studied architecture and was much influenced 
by the spirit of the Renaissance. This would account 
for his calling in Brunelleschi — the daring architect 
who was throwing off the bonds of tradition and boldly 
introducing new styles — rather than the Venetian or 
Milanese masters who were then crowding the works 
at the Certosa of Pavia and Milan Cathedral. In any 
case the Duke was satisfied with his architect, and made 
every effort to keep him in his service, saying that 
" Brunelleschi was a better defence for a city than any 
walls could be" (Plate XXXVII.). He said also that 
" Florence was worthy to be the home of such a genius, 
and that Filippo Brunelleschi was worthy to adorn such 
a city." The second visit was no doubt to inspect the 
building of this fortress, and Baldinucci affirms that he 
was also called in as an expert to give advice on some 
point of the Milan Cathedral.* 

It is thoughtt that the parts Brunelleschi designed 
were the Castello and Rocchetta, which stand on the 
right and left of the gate on entering the city. 

The Castello, one of the four fortified towers, is a 
square pile of solid but habitable construction, and in 
the centre is a large open courtyard (Plate XXXVIII.). 
This tower must have been finished by 1435, when, 
after their defeat at Gaeta by the Genoese and the 
Visconti, two Kings, Alfonso of Aragon and Giovanni 
of Navarre, with several other Princes, were prisoners 

* He was not the only Florentine who was called into council by the 
Milan builders. Luca Fancelli, who was in 1490 working at Modena, 
was, with Maestro Francesco di Giorgio of Siena, invited to examine 
and give his vote on a model for the cupola of Milan Cathedral. 

t See *'Archivio Storico Lombardo," tome xi., p. 435, article on 
•• II Castello di Milano." 



AS A MILITARY ENGINEER 139 

of honour in the Keep, which was specially decorated 
for their reception. This regal magnificence soon quite 
vanished ; the interior was within a few years an utter 
ruin ; for when Filippo Maria died in 1437 the Count 
Saratico gave over the castle to the "Defenders of 
Liberty " (Difensori della Liberty), and as soon as the 
Duke was buried the populace sacked and ruined the 
whole place. The adjoining Rocchetta, or " little fort," 
contained the dwelling-house of the Visconti family, 
and it is here that the touch of Brunelleschi is especially 
evident. It is on the exterior a picturesque and grand 
crenellated mass of building, but the inner side of the 
palace, which is towards the courtyard, is of quite a 
different style. 

Its entrance is beneath an arched and pillared loggia, 
whose arches are flanked with pilasters, similar to the 
ones in the Guelph Palace at Florence. The capitals 
of both columns and pilasters, though of the Corinthian 
order, have in their details many heraldic signs of the 
Visconti family. Brunelleschi had learned from the 
older masters to make his capitals eloquent and sug- 
gestive. 

The rich mouldings which form a string course beneath 
the cornice that crowns the basement show Brunel- 
leschi 's hand, as do the windows, which in the base- 
ment are still arched, and probably were so above, but 
they have been inartistically modernized. The arched 
windows of the exterior, with their fine moulding and 
base supported on brackets, still remain to show the 
original design. After the sack of the castle in 1437, 
Francesco Sforza, who married Bianca Maria, daughter 
of Duke Filippo Maria Visconti, set to work to restore 



140 BRUNELLESCHI 

the whole fortress. He employed the masters of the 
Venetian Lodge, and we find the familiar names of 
Filarete, Solari, Marco Leone, etc., among the archi- 
tects ; so, as usual, Brunelleschi's work was overlaid by 
later hands, and it is quite uncertain how much of the 
present building is due to him. 

The said Filippo made models and designs for several 
other ruling Princes, among them the model of the 
porto for the Signore di Pesaro. This was one of the 
Malatesta family to whom the lordship of Rimini also 
belonged. I can find no account of this port, which 
was formed by the embouchure of the river Foglia (the 
ancient Isaurus). It was a fine port at that era, but 
by the time of Francesco Maria IL della Rovere — ^the 
family who ruled Pesaro in the sixteenth century — it had 
fallen into decay, and was restored by him. Pius VII. 
added a fort and a lighthouse in 1821, so that little of 
Brunelleschi's work can be seen now. We are told he 
built a fine fortress for the Lord of Rimini, Sigismondo 
Malatesta, but there is no documentary evidence of 
this, though Manetti asserts it in his "Huomini 
singulari." 

It is true that Malatesta was in Florence in 1436, 
when he took his oath as Commander-in-Chief of the 
Papal troops. All the city was at that time making 
a hero of the triumphant architect of the cupola, and 
Malatesta may have consulted him as to the castle he 
designed to build for himself. Fabriczy contends that 
the words: "Erexit construxitque," as applied to Sigis- 
mond, in the inscription on the castle, point to Mala- 
testa as the actual designer and builder, an assertion 
which he thinks the more probable as " Sigismund was 



AS A MILITARY ENGINEER 141 

afterwards known as the designer and architect of the 
forts at Ragusa and Rhodes." But, seeing how in 
all ancient inscriptions the patron's name is placed 
as the originator, and the artist's either omitted or 
modestly named below, this is not entirely conclu- 
sive. 

Again, Fabriczy thinks " Brunelleschi was too old 
and feeble, at the date given (1446), to undertake any 
such great work at a distance from Florence." But 
the castle was begun in 1436, and finished in 1446, so 
Filippo would only have been fifty-nine years when it 
was begun, and several of his great works date later 
than this. The castle is now utterly mutilated, 
and used as a common barracks. The rose and 
elephant, with the inscription on the walls, stiU remain 
to point to its former princely possessors. Milizia, in 
his " Memorie degli Architetti," p. 162, gives an ac- 
count of Brunelleschi's later visit to Rome, which his 
earlier biographers omit, but, as usual, he cannot tell us 
what he did there. He says that Pope Eugene IV. 
(1431-1447) begged Cosimo de' Medici to send him an 
architect, as he wished some building done. Cosimo 
sent Brunelleschi with a letter, in which he wrote : *' I 
send your Holiness a man who (such is the grandeur of 
his genius) would have the courage to move the world." 
When the Pope beheld Filippo, so small and meagre 
and ugly, he cried "So this is the man with energy f^i 
enough to move the world !" " If your Holiness will 
give me a fulcrum for my lever, you will see what I can 
do." Milizia adds: "It is not known what work he 
undertook in Rome, but he was sent back to Florence 
laden with presents and honours." 



142 BRUNELLESCHI 



CHAPTER XIII 
FiLippo's death; and the heritage he left to 

THE WORLD 

The journey to Rome is the last one chronicled, if we 
except his return to Pisa, in 1440. After that the work 
at the Duomo was at the critical part of the closing-in 
of the summit and beginning the lantern, and he was 
probably not able to absent himself. Vasari says that, 
after fatiguing himself greatly in those works which 
shed honour on his name, Filippo fell ill and passed to 
a better life on April 16, 1446. He adds that he was 
mourned by his country, which knew and valued him 
more in death than in life. Baldinucci enlarges on this, 
and says, " His loss was wept for by all his friends, and 
even enemies, by all his companions and rivals, and 
especially by the poor artisans and beggars, who had 
lost in him the greater part of their substance, for 
they had till now received from him both charity and 
lucrative employment." 

Neither Vasari nor Baldinucci was right as to the 
precise date of his death, which took place on the 
15th and not on the i6th, as many writers say. 
This date is proved from a document in the archives of 
the Opera,* where, under the date February 20, 1446 
(1447 of our time), is registered a payment to the heirs 
of iFilippo Ser Brunellesco Lippi, late provvisore of the 
cupola, of 123 lire 19 soldi 10 denari, as the rest of his 

* Libro G. Stanziamenti 1442 to 1446 a.c. 133 1. 



DEATH AND INFLUENCE 143 

salary to the fifteenth day of April, 1446, on which day 
he expired (" qua die expiravit ").* 

Grand funeral obsequies were held in the Duomo, 
where his corpse lay beneath the mighty vault he had 
made, surrounded by candles, and visited for a last look 
by all the city. After the ceremony, in which the chief 
arti, and all the consuls and masters of the Opera 
took part, the remains were placed in the campanile. 
This was, probably, to await the decision of the city as 
to the site of his permanent tomb. The family sepul- 
chre of the Brunelleschi was in S. Marco, his father's 
house being in Via Larga (now Cavour). It lay be- 
tween the pulpit and the door, and had a marble slab 
bearing the family arms, the wavy lines and the two fig- 
leaves. The family, probably, wished him to be buried 
there, but the city decreed that he must lie in the 
Duomo. Some time elapsed before any decision was 
arrived at, for it appears that he was not buried for 
several months. A document given entire in Guasti,t 
dated February 18, 1446, i.e., the year after April, 1446, 
distinctly says the body of the said Filippo was still in 
deposit in the campanile of the Duomo, " quod corpus 
et cadaver dicti Filippi qui adhuc in depositum est, et 
repositum est, et est in campanile," and the Opera 
deliberate that it shall be buried in the Church of Santa 
Reparata, and that the Opera shall at its own expense 

* Several writers have disputed this date, and assert that he died in 
X444; but Ammannati, **Storia Fiorentina," partii., p. 47, under the 
date 1446, says: "A month after the coming of Archbishop St. Anto- 
nino there died in this city Filippo Brunelleschi, to whose noble and 
elevated genius the memorable cupola of Santa Reparata will render 
testimony for all the centuries as long as it shall stand." 

t Guasti, •• La Cupola," doc. 120, p. 56. 



144 BRUNELLESCHI 

put a marble monument on the wall, for which Don 
Carlo di Gregorio, the Florentine Chancellor, shall write 
the inscription. 

The funeral expenses were to be paid by the archi- 
tect's family. It is not explained why he was kept so 
long unburied. 

The monument was a marble medallion, by Buggiano.* 
It must have been a grateful task to his pupil and 
adopted son, Andrea Buggiano, to sculpture his foster- 
father's portrait, which was placed near that of Arnolfo 
in the Duomo, which one of them began and the other 
finished. In this relief we have certainly the most 
authentic likeness of Brunelleschi. Nothing of his 
plainness is softened or flattered away. He is there 
with his rugged, masterful face, determination printed 
on every crease of it. Beneath this his appreciative 
city placed the following inscription : 

Quantum Philippus Architectus arte Daedalaea valuerit ; 
cum huius celeberrimi Templi mlra testudo, tum plures. 
Machinae divino ingenio ab eo adlnventae documento 
esse possunt. Quapropter ob eximias sui animi dotes, 
singularesque virtutes eius B. M. Corpus XV. Kal. Maias 
anno MCCCCXLVI. in hac humo supposita grata patria 
sepeliri iussit. 

From the " Spogli Strozziani," quoted by Moreni, in 
a note to Baldinucci (p. 282), we find that Filippo had 
made a will as early as September 23, 1431, leaving his 
property to Carlo, Bartolommeo and Alamanno, sons of 
Ser Tommaso Aldobrandi, his relatives in the male line. 
In 1441 he made another will, naming as his legatee 
Andrea di Lazzero di Cavalcante of Borgo a Buggiano, 
near Lucca. He left 100 florins, which were invested 

* See Frontispiece. 



DEATH AND INFLUENCE 145 

in the Monte del Comune, to the Hospital of Santa 
Maria Nuova, and devised legacies to his relatives of 
the Aldobrandi family, named in the first will. All the 
rest went to his adopted son, Andrea da Buggiano. 
While mentioning Filippo's legacies, it might be 
interesting to know what property he possessed. His 
tax papers* for 1427 are thus headed in his quaint 
and queerly spelt Italian : 

"To the most reverent lords, the officers of the 
catasto (taxes), these are the possessions of Filippo di 
Ser Brunellesco. Item : A house and its appurtenances 
in the parish of S. Michele Berteldo ; Gonfalone of the 
Dragon, in the quarter of San Giovanni ; in the first 
part of which I live, the second is occupied by Nanni 
di Girozzo degli Agli, the third and fourth parts by the 
sons of Bindo degli Agli. I have, moreover, 1,415 florins 
invested in the Monte del Comune, at the rate of 15 to 
ig per thousand. Also 420 florins in the Monte di Pisa." 

Such was the substantial heritage which Filippo 
Brunelleschi left to his heirs, but he left to the world of 
art and science an inheritance infinitely greater. He 
found architecture languishing, and rapidly becoming 
a mere mechanical art in the hands of a guild which 
had once been its grandest exponent, but which from 
the gradual splitting up into various branches, and the 
infiltration of mediocre members, had lost its former 
life. Seeing it useless to continue longer in the grooves 
of the building guild, Brunelleschi was led by his Roman 
studies entirely to purge architecture of mediaevalism, 
and to go back to the classic purity of style. 

* Archivio di Stato di Firenze. "Portate al Catasto: Quartiere 
S. Giovanni ; Gonfalone Drago a.a. 1427," tome liii., p. 810. 
K 



146 BRUNELLESCHI 

A real Brunelleschi building differs as much from 
those of the later Renaissance masters of the seven- 
teenth century as it does from the Italian Gothic of his 
contemporaries. One may be certain never to find a 
false line or an unscientific design by him. If in a 
building which he may have begun you see such a 
falsity as a broken pediment, or an arch lacking the 
keystone, be sure that was placed by a later hand. If 
you find one of his favourite simple arches without 
pillars, whether plainly moulded or sculptured, filled 
by a window or door with a pediment which has no 
relation to the arch, such as Donatello's door in the 
sacristy of San Lorenzo and Ammannati's windows in 
the basement of the Pitti palace, it is pretty certain 
those pediments were not in Brunelleschi's design. 
He so loved the pure arch that he never mingled it 
with other architectural forms ; if he made his windows 
with pediments, the pediment stood alone, dedicated to 
its right use of supporting the weight above an open- 
ing, but never did he mix it with his arches. The 
strongest mark of his architecture is truth, the truth 
of a line to its object, the truth of form to its meaning. 

He used very few forms, his architectural lines being 
almost always confined, where support in space was 
needed, to the arch and pillar ; for mural decoration he 
chose the pillarless, moulded arch, or the classic panel. 
The round window, or occhio, as he called it, was also 
a favourite form with him when building required light 
from the higher parts. Yet, though his own choice of 
style was so severe and simple, he was perfectly un- 
bigoted; and when the work was a question of mere 
restoration, he always respected older styles, and never 



DEATH AND INFLUENCE 147 

made a visible clash. Thus, in the Guelph palace he 
kept the outside entirely in the mediaeval style of the 
basement already existing, though his hall in the interior 
was in pure Renaissance style. Again, at the Badia he^ 
sacrificed any design he might have wished to make for/ 
the fa9ade, so as to keep the Romano- Lombard work/ 
pure and untouched; yet the interior is in his owri 
semi-classical style. 

Another legacy Brunelleschi left to the world of art 
was that of individuality. All earlier works of archi- 
tecture appear to have been as it were collective, the 
builders of the parts being separate members of a con- 
gregate body ; and though they put their original ideas 
and fantasies into their own part of the work, the 
individual artists were lost in the congregate merits 
of the entire edifice. We hear vaguely that Arnolfo 
began the Duomo, that Giotto and Andrea Pisani and 
Talenti, etc., went on with it, but who knows the sculptors 
and designers of the separate parts ? It is only from late 
discoveries in the books of the Opera that we find the 
fine mandorla door was not Jacopo della Quercia's, but 
Nanni di Banco's. So on all the early Roman and 
Tuscan buildings, where there is any description at all, 
it usually records the patron or the ruling operaio, but 
very seldom the artist. 

After Brunelleschi's grand strike for freedom, artists 
dared to stand alone, and the builders of the Renais- 
sance shine out as separate men whose distinctive minds 
are impressed on their buildings. Michelozzi, Alberti, 
Cronaca, San Gallo, and, last and greatest, Michael 
Angelo, are all individual artists whose works are their 
own independent conception. The gain was certainly 
K 2 



i^ 



\ 



148 BRUNELLESCHI 

homogeneity in the buildings ; but there was neverthe- 
less something of infinite variety and freedom of im- 
agination in the collective system which was lost in the 
individual one. 

Whether the Italian Gothic would have held its sway 

if Brunelleschi had not turned the taste towards a classic 

revival is a question which might probably be fairly 

answered in the negative. The classic revival was in 

\ the air ; the cinque-cento Florentines were all imbued 

^with it. In literature, in art, in everything, it was 

dominant. Brunelleschi was the first to apply the 

classic bias to architecture, and he did it on the purest 

possible lines. If he had not made the first steps, 

Alberti surely would have been the pioneer, for his 

studies led him in the same groove ; but it would have 

been a diflferent style. Indeed, if Alberti and the later 

builders had followed the lead of Brunelleschi on his 

^pwn lines, Italian Renaissance architecture would have 

been far nobler than it is. 



I THE WORKS OF FILIPPO 

BRUNELLESCHI STILL EXISTING 

[ 

', SCULPTURES. 

\ FLORENCE. 

! I. Santa Maria Novella. 

Crucifix carved in wood. 

2. Or San Michele. 

Statue of St. Peter. The commission for two statues to 
. St. Peter and St. Mark was given jointly to Donatello and 

} Brunelleschi. The former sculptured St. Mark. It is not 

\ proved whether Brunelleschi executed the St. Peter or not. 

I 3. San Jacopo sopra Arno. 

The tabernacle for the host was designed by Filippo, but 
! executed by Giusto da Settignano. 

4. Museum of the Bargello. 

I Sacrifice of Isaac, a relief in bronze which was cast for the 

{ competition for the doors of the Baptistery. 

[ PISTOJA. 

! 5. The Cathedral. 

Two half-figures of prophets cast and chiselled in silver. 
They are placed at the ends of the first row of statues on 



f the superaltar. 



ISO BRUNELLESCHI 

ECCLESIASTICAL ARCHITECTURE. 
FLORENCE. 

6. Thb Cathbdral. 

The cupola, the largest that had been till then attempted. 
It was designed by Brunelleschi, and built under his super- 
intendence without scaffolding, except quite at the top, and 
entirely without centering. It occupied him from 14 17 to 
bis death in 1446. His part of the building began with the 
octagonal tribune, and ended with the base of the lantern. 

7. Tribune of San Zenobio. 

A vaulted subterranean chapel beneath the present altar 
of the saint — a plain low vault containing three ancient 
episcopal tombs. 

8. In the Sacristy. 

The arco piano^ a flat passage leading to the organ-gallery, 
and passing across the sacristy high over the door. It is 
built without supports, and has the masonry of an arch 
without its curve. 

9. Choir of the Duomo. 

The octagonal choir was designed by Brunelleschi, and 
temporarily erected in wood. Bandinelli afterwards executed 
it in marble. 

10. Piazza San Lorenzo. 

The fine classic church of San Lorenzo, which is of noble 
proportions, of basilican form, designed and almost finished 
Dy Brunelleschi. 

11. Sacristy of San Lorenzo. 

The older sacristy was entirely built by Filippo, excepting 
only Uie heavy portals of Donatello's bronze doors. 

12. Cloister of San Lorenzo. 

Designed by Brunelleschi, but partly changed when the 
Laurentian Library was built. 



WORKS STILL EXISTING 151 

13. Church of Santo Spirito. 

The architect's masterpiece. A grand church of original 
design. Nave and transepts have a double colonnade. It 
was begun by Brunelleschi, but finished from his designs. 

14. The Church of " Gli Angioli " in Via del Castel- 

LACCIO. 

All that now remains is a polygonal mass of stone 
masonry known as the "Castellaccio/' opposite the Matemitk 
Hospital It was to have been a fine circular church, but 
Pippo Spano the patron went to the wars, and it was never 
finished. 

15. Pazzi Chapel in the Cloisters of Santa Croce. 

A beautiful and ornate neo-Renaissance building, begun 
in 142a 

16. Loggia of the Foundling Hospital on Piazza 

SS. Annunziata. 

Designed by Brunelleschi, chiefly erected and partly 
altered by Francesco della Luna. 

17. Loggia di San Paolo, Piazza S. Maria Novella. 

A similar colonnade, which is attributed to Brunelleschi, 
but no documentary evidence exists to prove it. 

18. The Barbadori Chapel in San Jacopo sopr' Arno. 

An arched chapel for an altar, with a small free-built 
dome. 



FIESOLE. 

19. The Badia at San Domenico. 

The church and convent were designed by Brunelleschi, 
but chiefly built on his plans by later artists. The church 
is of a Renaissance style mtemally, but the facade is the old 
Romano- Lombard one. 



152 BRUNELLESCHI 

CIVIL ARCHITECTURE. 

FLORENCE. 

20. Palazzo dblla Parte Gublfa, Via dbllb Tbrmb. 

The work of Brunelleschi in this was the erection of an 
upper story on the massive basement of the ancient Lam- 
berti house. In the interior he made a grand Renaissance 
assembly-room, but the exterior was in keeping with the 
Tuscan style of the basement. This fine hall has been cut 
up by a staircase and class-rooms, but it is hoped that it will 
shortly be restored. 

21. Palazzo Busini, aftbrwards Quaratesi, Piazza 

Ognissanti. 

A house externally in old Florentine style, the upper floor 
projecting on brackets. The interior has signs of the archi- 
tect's classic tendencies. It was richly adorned with sgraffiti 
by Andrea Feltrini ; these have been copied in the present 
restoration. 

22. The Barbadori Palace, in Borgo San Jacopo. 

A house entirely in Brunelleschi's Renaissance style, with 
fine spacious rooms. It is the first house on the left entering 
from Ponte Vecchio. 

23. Pazzi Palace, now Quaratesi, Via del Procon- 

solo. 

One of the few buildings in which Brunelleschi's work is 
fairly preserved. It is in beautifiilly ornate Tuscan style, 
with large double-light arched windows with sculptured 
mouldings. The cortile is especially elegant. 

24. Palazzo Pitti. 

Only the central portion is the work of Brunelleschi ; the 
sides and wings were later additions. 

25. Villa Pitti, now Von Stumm, at Rusciano, Porta 

S. N1CCOL6. 

Originally built for Luca Pitti by Brunelleschi, but so 
frequently added to and altered that it is difficult to recognise 
his part in it. 



WORKS STILL EXISTING IS3 

26. Royal Villa at Petraja, 

The tower of this villa is said to have been either built or 
restored by Brunelleschi. 



MILITARY ARCHITECTURE. 
PISA. 

27. Fortifications of Ponte al Mare. 

Two towers were erected by Brunelleschi to guard the 
bridge nearest the sea, but not much of them can be dis- 
tinguished now. 

28. Porta del Parlascio. 

Fortified and strengthened. 

29. ViCO PiSANO, ON THE FRONTIER OF PiSA. 

A fortress with fine towers and bastions, and walls all 
round the town. 



LASTRA, NEAR SIGNA. 

30. A fortress now partly destroyed, and a walled village called 
Malmantile. The walls of the latter are still standing, a 
unique instance of a fortified village. 



RENCINE AND STAGGIA. 

31. Two strongholds in Val d' Elsa, fortified in 143 1 by the 
Florentines, Brunelleschi being chief architect Some 
remains of the Staggia castle are still existing. 



MANTUA. 

32. Castel San Giorgio. 

A fine castle either built or restored by Brunelleschi. It 
has since been altered and modernized, but the general style 
is unchanged. 



154 BRUNELLESCHI 

FERRARA. 

33* Some works of fortification, not specified. 

MILAN. 

34. The Castello. 

Restorations in the fortifications; Brunelleschi's parts 
were the Castello and Kocchetta, or keep, in which was 
the palace of Duke Filippo Visconti. 

RIMINI. 

35. Castle of Sigismondo Malatesta (now in ruins). 

Brunelleschi's employment on this castle is not proved. 

ROME. 

36. Some works for Pope Eugene IV., not specified. 



DOCUMENTS 



GUASTI : "La Cupola," p. 25, doc. 43 : 

D. MODELLO MURATO, PER FiLIPPO DI SER BrUNELLESCO, 

Nanni d'Antonio DI Banco e Donatello. 

(a) Stanziamenio at detti ire Maestri. 

(An. 14 1 9, a' 29 dicembre.) 

Stanziaverunt Filippo ser Brunelleschi, lohanni Antonii Banchi, 
et Donato Niccolai, civibus florentinis, invicem, quos recipere 
assertum fuit pro certo modello Cupole dicte ecclesie per eos facto 
et murato cum lateribus et calcina, sine armadura, pro exemplo 
Cupole ; in totum inter omnes, et per eos prout eis videbitur 
dividendos, florenos quadragintiquinque auri (B.D. LXXVIII, a.c. 
51 t.). 

Filippo di ser Brunelescho, e Giovanni d' Antonio di Bancho, e 
Donato di Nichol6 di detto Bardi, deono avere per loro faticha 
durata in fare j modello di mattoni murato a chalcina, sanza alchuna 
armadura, fatto piu tempo fa, per asenpro e modano della Chupola 
grande, fiorini quarantacinque d'oro (B.S. rr. a.c. 60). 

II 

GUASTi ; " La Cupola," p. 38, doc. 74 : 

Cassazione del Ghiberti. 

(An. 1425, a* 28 giugno.) 

Deliberaverunt quod Laurentius Bartoluccii, aurifex, non possit 
nee teneatur habere ab Opera prefata aliquod salarium pro eius 
mercede et offitio a prima die lulii proxime futuri in antea, et in 



156 BRUNELLESCHI 

futunun, etc. ; non obstante dectione facta de dicto Laurentio alias 
per consules, operarios et quattuor ofiitiales Cupole dicte Opere, 
foquente in contrarium (B.D. LXXXVII. a.c. 25 t) 

III 

GUASTI : " La Cupola," p. 55, doc. 117 : 

(An, 1434, a' 26 agosto.) 

Deliberaverunt quod Capitaneus populi civitatis Florentio soUi- 
citetur, quod captus pro Arte Magistrorum in suo palatio ad ipsorum 
instantiam detineatur in dicto palatio, et non relapsetur sine eorum 
licentia; et hoc pro eo quod fecit dicta Ars Filippo ser Brunelleschi 
in contentum omtii ipsorum operatiorum (L.D.I. a.c. 221). 

IV 

GuASTi : " La Cupola," p. 90, doc. 261 : 

Benedizione della Cupola. 

(An. 1436, a' 31 agosto.) 

Stanziarono a Simone di Lorenzo, famiglio de V Opera, lire 
settantadue, soldi dodici, den. vj, per piu spese pe' lui fatte, a stanza 
de V Opera, a* tronbetti e piferi che sonorono; e pane e vino e 
chame e fnitte e chacio e macheroni e altre chose, per dare a 
maestri e ministri de V Opera, e a' chalonaci (canonici) e preti di 
chiesa, per la festa e benedizione fatta a dl 30 d' aghosto 1436, della 
chiusura della Chupola, e per dame e presentame el vesschovo di 
Fiesole, che and6 in sulla Chupola a benedire (B.S. cc. a.c. 134). 



INDEX 



Agnolo, Baccio d', 8i, 84, 109 

Albert!, Leon» 14, 85 

Ambrogio, Giovanni d', 30, 49, 

55 
Ammannati, work in the Pitti 

Palace by, 126, 128 
Antonio, Battista d', 55,57, 60, 64, 

70. 79. 94. 132 

Bandinelli, Baccio, 98 

Barbadori Chapel, 44 n., 85, 
130 

Barbadori Palace, 130 

Borra, Bernardo del, 80 

Brunelleschi, Boccaccio, at Pe- 
traja, 119 

Brunelleschi, Filippo, his birth, 2 ; 
his family, 2-5 ; apprenticed to 
a goldsmith, 6, 7 ; his dis- 
coveries in perspective, 8; his 
personal appearance, 11 ; por- 
traits of, II, 12; character of, 
12-15 ; as a sculptor, 15 et seq. ; 
his Mends, 16 ; and Dona- 
tello, story of the crucifix, 17; 
competition for the Baptistery 
doors, 20 et seq.; goes to Rome, 
25 ; his architectural studies, 
26-28 ; story of Grasso and, 33- 
36 ; and the dome of the cathe- 
dral, 39 et seq, ; associated with 
Ghiberti, 55 ; exposes Ghiberti, 
67, 68 ; relations with his work- 
men, 70 et seq,: dispute with 
the maestranze, 75-77; his suc- 
cessors in the work, 80; other 
public works in Florence by, 
84, 85 ; other works in the 
Duomo, 94-98 ; his volta piana, 
97; the Church of S. Lorenzo, 



100-103 1 the Pazzi Chapel, 103- 
106; the Church of S. Spirlto, 
106-111 ; the badia of Fiesole, 
1 13- 1 16; palaces in Florence, 
116 et seq. ; fortifications at Pisa 
by, 131-133; engineering works 
at Lucca, 133-135 ; other fortifi- 
cations, 136 et seq.; his death, 
142 ; and funeral, 143 ; his will, 
144, 145 ; his influence on archi- 
tecture, 145 et seq, 

Brunellesco, Ser, father of the 
architect, 3-5 

Buggiano, Andrea, portrait of 
Brunelleschi by, 11, 144 

Delia Luna, Francesco, 86, 87, 

89-93. 137 
Delia Quercia, Jacopo, 22 
Delia Robbia, Andrea and Luca, 

92, 93. 97. 98, 104 
Desiderio di Settignano, 105, 115 
Donatello and Brunelleschi, 14, 

17-20, 22, 24, 25, 32, 36, 37, 47, 

97. 135 > bronze doors of S. 

Lorenzo by. 102, 103; Pazzi 

Madonna by, 123 

Eugenius IV., Pope, 104, 141 

Fancelli, Luca, 106, 124, 138 n. 
Feltrini, Andrea, 117 
Fiesole, the badia of, 113-116 
Florence: Duomo, the dome, 38 
et seq. ; Tribune of S. Zenobio, 
94, 95 ; sacristy, 96, 97 ; choir, 
98 ; Palazzo della Parte Guelfa, 
85-89; Loggia of the Found- 
ling Hospital, 89-93 ; Loggia d| 
S. Paolo, 93 ; Church of San 



158 



INDEX 



Lorenzo, 98-103 ; Pazzi Chapel, 
103, 106; Church of San Spinto, 
106- III ; the "Castellaccio," 
111-113; Palazzo Busini, 116- 
119; Palazzo Pazzi, 120-123; 
Palazzo Pitti, 123-128; Villa 
Pitti, 128, 129; Palazzo Bar- 
badori, 130 

Ghiberti, Lorenzo, 16 ; his design 
for the Baptistery doors, 21-23 ; 
his model for the Duomo, 54; 
associated with Brunelleschi 
in building the dome, 55 et seq. ; 
exposed by Brunelleschi and 
dismissed, 67-69; his tomb of 
S. Zenobio, 94, 95 

Giusto di Francesco da Settignano, 

37.38 
Grasso, Legnaiolo. story of, 33 
Guinigi, Paolo, 134, 135 

Lapi family, the, 2 

Lucca, Brunelleschi at, 133-135 

Lustra, fortifications at, 132 

Majano, Giuliano da, 106, 120, 124 
Malatesta, Sigismondo, 140 
Manetti, Antonio, the most trust- 
worthy biographer of Brunel- 
leschi, I, 38, 39; work by, 74, 
75» 80, 97, loi 
Mantua, Brunelleschi at, 136, 137 
Masaccio, 14, 16 
Medici, Giovanni de', 99, 100 
Medici, Cosimo de', 24, 98, 102, 

113, 123, 141 
Mellino, Francesco, 107 
Michelozzi, Michelozzo, 80, 105 n., 
127. 135 



Milan, Brunelleschi at, 137; the 
Castello, 138; the Rocchetta, 
139 

Nanno di Banco, 47 

Pampaloni, statue of Brunelleschi 

by, 12 
Pazzi family, the, 103, 104, 120 
Pazzi Chapel, 103-106 
Pazzi Palace, 120 
Petraja, royal villa at, 119 
Pisa, fortifications at, 131 
Pitti, Luca, 113, 123, 128, 129 
Pitti Palace, 123-128 
Pitti Villa at Rusciano, 128 
Pollaiolo, Simone del, 81 

Rencine, fortifications at, 136 
Ridolfi, Schiatta, 44 
Rimini, Castle of, 140, 141 

San Gallo, Giuliano, 81, 106, 131 
Sansovino, Andrea, 106, 109 
Scolari, Filippo and Matteo, 36, 

III 
Staggia, fortifications at, 136 
Strozzi, Filippo, 123 

Toscanelli, Paolo, 10 

Vasari, portraits of Brunelleschi 
and Ghiberti by, 12; work in 
the Palazzo della Parte Guelfa 
by, 87 
Verrocchio, Andrea del, 80, 102 
Visconti, Duke Filippo Maria, 
89. 137-139 



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